In a little notebook where he jotted down some intended experiments we find evidence of those glimpses of divination in a few summary lines: “Show that life is in the germ, that it has been but in a state of transmission since the origin of creation. That the germ possesses possibilities of development, either of intelligence and will, or--and in the same way--of physical organs. Compare these possibilities with those possessed by the germ of chemical species which is in the chemical molecule. The possibilities of development in the germ of the chemical molecule consist in crystallization, in its form, in its physical and chemical properties. Those properties are in power in the germ of the molecule in the same way as the organs and tissues of animals and plants are in their respective germs. Add: nothing is more curious than to carry the comparison of living species with mineral species into the study of the wounds of either, and of their healing by means of nutrition--a nutrition coming from within in living beings, and from without through the medium of crystallization in the others. Here detail facts....” In that same notebook, Pasteur, after writing down the following heading, “Letter to prepare on the species in connection with molecular dissymmetry,” added, “I could write that letter to Bernard. I should say that being deprived of a laboratory by the present state of France, I am going to give him the preconceived ideas that I shall try to experiment upon when better times come. There is no peril in expressing ideas _a priori_, when they are taken as such, and can be gradually modified, perhaps even completely transformed, according to the result of the observation of facts.” He once compared those preconceived ideas with searchlights guiding the experimentalist, saying that they only became dangerous when they became fixed ideas.