Creative Chemistry | Page 7

too that every stick he lays on the fire lessens his fuel
supply and hastens the inevitable time when the beasts of the jungle
will make their fatal rush.
Chaos is the "natural" state of the universe. Cosmos is the rare and
temporary exception. Of all the million spheres this is apparently the
only one habitable and of this only a small part--the reader may draw
the boundaries to suit himself--can be called civilized. Anarchy is the
natural state of the human race. It prevailed exclusively all over the
world up to some five thousand years ago, since which a few peoples
have for a time succeeded in establishing a certain degree of peace and
order. This, however, can be maintained only by strenuous and
persistent efforts, for society tends naturally to sink into the chaos out
of which it has arisen.
It is only by overcoming nature that man can rise. The sole salvation
for the human race lies in the removal of the primal curse, the sentence
of hard labor for life that was imposed on man as he left Paradise.
Some folks are trying to elevate the laboring classes; some are trying to
keep them down. The scientist has a more radical remedy; he wants to
annihilate the laboring classes by abolishing labor. There is no longer
any need for human labor in the sense of personal toil, for the physical
energy necessary to accomplish all kinds of work may be obtained from
external sources and it can be directed and controlled without extreme
exertion. Man's first effort in this direction was to throw part of his
burden upon the horse and ox or upon other men. But within the last
century it has been discovered that neither human nor animal servitude
is necessary to give man leisure for the higher life, for by means of the
machine he can do the work of giants without exhaustion. But the
introduction of machines, like every other step of human progress, met
with the most violent opposition from those it was to benefit. "Smash
'em!" cried the workingman. "Smash 'em!" cried the poet. "Smash 'em!"
cried the artist. "Smash 'em!" cried the theologian. "Smash 'em!" cried
the magistrate. This opposition yet lingers and every new invention,

especially in chemistry, is greeted with general distrust and often with
legislative prohibition.
Man is the tool-using animal, and the machine, that is, the
power-driven tool, is his peculiar achievement. It is purely a creation of
the human mind. The wheel, its essential feature, does not exist in
nature. The lever, with its to-and-fro motion, we find in the limbs of all
animals, but the continuous and revolving lever, the wheel, cannot be
formed of bone and flesh. Man as a motive power is a poor thing. He
can only convert three or four thousand calories of energy a day and he
does that very inefficiently. But he can make an engine that will handle
a hundred thousand times that, twice as efficiently and three times as
long. In this way only can he get rid of pain and toil and gain the
wealth he wants.
Gradually then he will substitute for the natural world an artificial
world, molded nearer to his heart's desire. Man the Artifex will
ultimately master Nature and reign supreme over his own creation until
chaos shall come again. In the ancient drama it was deus ex machina
that came in at the end to solve the problems of the play. It is to the
same supernatural agency, the divinity in machinery, that we must look
for the salvation of society. It is by means of applied science that the
earth can be made habitable and a decent human life made possible.
Creative evolution is at last becoming conscious.

II
NITROGEN
PRESERVER AND DESTROYER OF LIFE
In the eyes of the chemist the Great War was essentially a series of
explosive reactions resulting in the liberation of nitrogen. Nothing like
it has been seen in any previous wars. The first battles were fought with
cellulose, mostly in the form of clubs. The next were fought with silica,
mostly in the form of flint arrowheads and spear-points. Then came the

metals, bronze to begin with and later iron. The nitrogenous era in
warfare began when Friar Roger Bacon or Friar Schwartz--whichever it
was--ground together in his mortar saltpeter, charcoal and sulfur. The
Chinese, to be sure, had invented gunpowder long before, but
they--poor innocents--did not know of anything worse to do with it
than to make it into fire-crackers. With the introduction of "villainous
saltpeter" war ceased to be the vocation of the nobleman and since the
nobleman had no other vocation he began to become extinct. A bullet
fired from a mile away is no respecter of persons. It is