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 difficult as that of experiment. This book is scarcely known because it is on a level to which few people nowadays attain. The influence it will have on medical science, on its progress, and on its very language, will be enormous. I cannot now prove my assertion, but the reading of this book will leave so strong an impression that I cannot help thinking that a new spirit will at once inspire these splendid researches." This was said by Pasteur in 1866. That is what he thought of the work of his senior and his rival, at the moment when he himself was about to inspire those "splendid researches" with the movement of reform, the importance and the consequences of which have no equivalent in the history of science. By their discoveries and their teaching, by their examples and their principles, Claude Bernard and Pasteur have succeeded in emancipating a portion of the domain of vital facts from the direct intervention of hypothetical agents and first causes. They were compelled, however, to leave to philosophical speculation, to directing forces, to animism, to vitalism, an immense provisory field, the field which corresponds to the functions of generation and of development, to the life of the species and to its variations. Here we find them again in various disguises.