Creative Chemistry | Page 6

better by no mean, But nature makes that mean: so o'er
that art, Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art That nature makes.
How can you say that art surpasses nature when you know very well
that nothing man is able to make can in any way equal the perfection of
all nature's products?
It is blasphemous of you to claim that man can improve the works of
God as they appear in nature. Only the Creator can create. Man only
imitates, destroys or defiles God's handiwork.
No, it was not in momentary absence of mind that I claimed that man
could improve upon nature in the making of dyes. I not only said it, but
I proved it. I not only proved it, but I can back it up. I will give a
million dollars to anybody finding in nature dyestuffs as numerous,
varied, brilliant, pure and cheap as those that are manufactured in the
laboratory. I haven't that amount of money with me at the moment, but
the dyers would be glad to put it up for the discovery of a satisfactory
natural source for their tinctorial materials. This is not an opinion of
mine but a matter of fact, not to be decided by Shakespeare, who was
not acquainted with the aniline products.
Shakespeare in the passage quoted is indulging in his favorite
amusement of a play upon words. There is a possible and a proper
sense of the word "nature" that makes it include everything except the
supernatural. Therefore man and all his works belong to the realm of
nature. A tenement house in this sense is as "natural" as a bird's nest, a
peapod or a crystal.
But such a wide extension of the term destroys its distinctive value. It is
more convenient and quite as correct to use "nature" as I have used it,
in contradistinction to "art," meaning by the former the products of the
mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, excluding the designs,
inventions and constructions of man which we call "art."

We cannot, in a general and abstract fashion, say which is superior, art
or nature, because it all depends on the point of view. The worm loves
a rotten log into which he can bore. Man prefers a steel cabinet into
which the worm cannot bore. If man cannot improve Upon nature he
has no motive for making anything. Artificial products are therefore
superior to natural products as measured by man's convenience,
otherwise they would have no reason for existence.
Science and Christianity are at one in abhorring the natural man and
calling upon the civilized man to fight and subdue him. The conquest
of nature, not the imitation of nature, is the whole duty of man.
Metchnikoff and St. Paul unite in criticizing the body we were born
with. St. Augustine and Huxley are in agreement as to the eternal
conflict between man and nature. In his Romanes lecture on "Evolution
and Ethics" Huxley said: "The ethical progress of society depends, not
on imitating the cosmic process, still less on running away from it, but
on combating it," and again: "The history of civilization details the
steps by which man has succeeded in building up an artificial world
within the cosmos."
There speaks the true evolutionist, whose one desire is to get away
from nature as fast and far as possible. Imitate Nature? Yes, when we
cannot improve upon her. Admire Nature? Possibly, but be not blinded
to her defects. Learn from Nature? We should sit humbly at her feet
until we can stand erect and go our own way. Love Nature? Never! She
is our treacherous and unsleeping foe, ever to be feared and watched
and circumvented, for at any moment and in spite of all our vigilance
she may wipe out the human race by famine, pestilence or earthquake
and within a few centuries obliterate every trace of its achievement.
The wild beasts that man has kept at bay for a few centuries will in the
end invade his palaces: the moss will envelop his walls and the lichen
disrupt them. The clam may survive man by as many millennia as it
preceded him. In the ultimate devolution of the world animal life will
disappear before vegetable, the higher plants will be killed off before
the lower, and finally the three kingdoms of nature will be reduced to
one, the mineral. Civilized man, enthroned in his citadel and defended
by all the forces of nature that he has brought under his control, is after

all in the same situation as a savage, shivering in the darkness beside
his fire, listening to the pad of predatory feet, the rustle of serpents and
the cry of birds of prey, knowing that only the fire keeps his enemies
off, but knowing