An excerpt from Bacteria in Relation to Plant Diseases, published in 1905

Among the multitude of workers in animal pahtology and bacteriology during the last thirty-five years certain men tower far above the rest, their contributions to science having been more conspicuous and their imprint on their generation more lasting. If France is mentioned, we think at once of Pasteur, Davaine, Duclaux, Metchnikoff, Chamberland, Roux, Nocard, and Chauveau. In Germany we think of Virchow, Cohn, Cohnheim, Koch, Weigert, Nicolaier, Eberth, Gaffky, Hueppe, Flügge, Fraenkel, Pfeiffer, Behring, Ehrlich, and many others; in Japan, of Kitasato and Shiga; in the United States, of Welch, Sternberg, Theobald, Smith, Nuttall, Councilman, and a host of brilliant younger men, many of whom recieved their training under Welch in the Johns Hopkins Pathological Laboratory. England, from which one might have expected so much, has conttibuted comparitibely little, owing probably to the laws in force in that country respecting animal experimentation, laws framed with the intention of doing a kindness to the lower animals, but working, on account of their interference with the pathologist, a distinct detriment both to men and animals, the aim of all animal pathological inquiry being the alleviation of human and animal suffering. In passing we should not forget, however, the contributions of Tyndall and Lister, the one a physicist, the other a surgeon.

Many have attacked Louis Pasteur as a man who denied God's existence and other's have gone as far to say he was a devout Catholic his whole life. In my humble opinion, he was somewhere in between.Pasteur was a spiritual man and recognized the need for religion, as many times he would rely on faith alone to keep his work going. He trusted that the universe was ordered and organized efficiently and that if he continued to pour his heart into his work, his efforts would not fail him. Because of this, he did not rely on religion and religious dogma to guide his beliefs. He was a man of his work and the work utlimately defined the man. But Pasteur did not hide from religion. In a letter to to his sisters as a young mand he wrote:

If by chance you falter on the journey, a hand will be there to support you. If that should be wanting, God, who alone would take the hand from you, would accomplish the work.

And near the end of his life, in his seventy-third year Pasteur spoke of the end of his journey and how it came to him "in an absolute faith in God and Eternity," and with a conviction that the good given us in this world will be continued here-after.