Creative Chemistry | Page 4

other man in the country to
bring home to his readers some of the great results of modern chemical
activity as well as some of the big problems which must continue to
engage the attention of our chemists. Dr. Slosson has indeed the unique
quality of combining an exact and intimate knowledge of chemistry
with the exquisite clarity and pointedness of expression of a born
writer.
We have here an exposition by a master mind, an exposition shorn of
the terrifying and obscuring technicalities of the lecture room, that will
be as absorbing reading as any thrilling romance. For the story of
scientific achievement is the greatest epic the world has ever known,
and like the great national epics of bygone ages, should quicken the life
of the nation by a realization of its powers and a picture of its
possibilities.

CREATIVE CHEMISTRY

La Chimie posséde cette faculté créatrice à un degré plus éminent que
les autres sciences, parce qu'elle pénètre plus profondément et atteint
jusqu'aux éléments naturels des êtres.
--Berthelot.

I
THREE PERIODS OF PROGRESS
The story of Robinson Crusoe is an allegory of human history. Man is a
castaway upon a desert planet, isolated from other inhabited worlds--if
there be any such--by millions of miles of untraversable space. He is
absolutely dependent upon his own exertions, for this world of his, as
Wells says, has no imports except meteorites and no exports of any
kind. Man has no wrecked ship from a former civilization to draw upon
for tools and weapons, but must utilize as best he may such raw
materials as he can find. In this conquest of nature by man there are
three stages distinguishable:
1. The Appropriative Period 2. The Adaptive Period 3. The Creative
Period
These eras overlap, and the human race, or rather its vanguard,
civilized man, may be passing into the third stage in one field of human
endeavor while still lingering in the second or first in some other
respect. But in any particular line this sequence is followed. The
primitive man picks up whatever he can find available for his use. His
successor in the next stage of culture shapes and develops this crude
instrument until it becomes more suitable for his purpose. But in the
course of time man often finds that he can make something new which
is better than anything in nature or naturally produced. The savage
discovers. The barbarian improves. The civilized man invents. The first
finds. The second fashions. The third fabricates.
The primitive man was a troglodyte. He sought shelter in any cave or
crevice that he could find. Later he dug it out to make it more roomy

and piled up stones at the entrance to keep out the wild beasts. This
artificial barricade, this false façade, was gradually extended and
solidified until finally man could build a cave for himself anywhere in
the open field from stones he quarried out of the hill. But man was not
content with such materials and now puts up a building which may be
composed of steel, brick, terra cotta, glass, concrete and plaster, none
of which materials are to be found in nature.
The untutored savage might cross a stream astride a floating tree trunk.
By and by it occurred to him to sit inside the log instead of on it, so he
hollowed it out with fire or flint. Later, much later, he constructed an
ocean liner.
Cain, or whoever it was first slew his brother man, made use of a stone
or stick. Afterward it was found a better weapon could be made by
tying the stone to the end of the stick, and as murder developed into a
fine art the stick was converted into the bow and this into the catapult
and finally into the cannon, while the stone was developed into the high
explosive projectile. The first music to soothe the savage breast was the
soughing of the wind through the trees. Then strings were stretched
across a crevice for the wind to play upon and there was the Æolian
harp. The second stage was entered when Hermes strung the tortoise
shell and plucked it with his fingers and when Athena, raising the wind
from her own lungs, forced it through a hollow reed. From these
beginnings we have the organ and the orchestra, producing such sounds
as nothing in nature can equal.
The first idol was doubtless a meteorite fallen from heaven or a
fulgurite or concretion picked up from the sand, bearing some slight
resemblance to a human being. Later man made gods in his own image,
and so sculpture and painting grew until now the creations of futuristic
art could be worshiped--if one wanted to--without violation of the
second commandment, for they are not the likeness of