it was left to solidify slowly.  The sudden cooling of the iron on the outside subjected the carbon, which was held in solution, to intense pressure and when the bit of iron was dissolved in acid some of the carbon was found to be crystallized as diamond, although most of it was graphite.  To be sure, the diamonds were hardly big enough to be seen with the naked eye, but since Moissan’s aim was to make diamonds, not big diamonds, he ceased his efforts at this point.

To produce large diamonds the carbon would have to be liquefied in considerable quantity and kept in that state while it slowly crystallized.  But that could only be accomplished at a temperature and pressure and duration unattainable as yet.  Under ordinary atmospheric pressure carbon passes over from the solid to the gaseous phase without passing through the liquid, just as snow on a cold, clear day will evaporate without melting.

Probably some one in the future will take up the problem where Moissan dropped it and find out how to make diamonds of any size.  But it is not a question that greatly interests either the scientist or the industrialist because there is not much to be learned from it and not much to be made out of it.  If the inventor of a process for making cheap diamonds could keep his electric furnace secretly in his cellar and market his diamonds cautiously he might get rich out of it, but he would not dare to turn out very large stones or too many of them, for if a suspicion got around that he was making them the price would fall to almost nothing even if he did sell another one.  For the high price of the diamond is purely fictitious.  It is in the first place kept up by limiting the output of the natural stone by the combination of dealers and, further, the diamond is valued not for its usefulness or beauty but by its real or supposed rarity.  Chesterton says:  “All is gold that glitters, for the glitter is the gold.”  This is not so true of gold, for if gold were as cheap as nickel it would be very valuable, since we should gold-plate our machinery, our ships, our bridges and our roofs.  But if diamonds were cheap they would be good for nothing except grindstones and drills.  An imitation diamond made of heavy glass (paste) cannot be distinguished from the genuine gem except by an expert.  It sparkles about as brilliantly, for its refractive index is nearly as high.  The reason why it is not priced so highly is because the natural stone has presumably been obtained through the toil and sweat of hundreds of negroes searching in the blue ground of the Transvaal for many months.  It is valued exclusively by its cost.  To wear a diamond necklace is the same as hanging a certified check for $100,000 by a string around the neck.

Real values are enhanced by reduction in the cost of the price of production.  Fictitious values are destroyed by it.  Aluminum at twenty-five cents a pound is immensely more valuable to the world than when it is a curiosity in the chemist’s cabinet and priced at $160 a pound.