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 anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.

In the textile industry the same development is observable.  The primitive man used the skins of animals he had slain to protect his own skin.  In the course of time he—­or more probably his wife, for it is to the women rather than to the men that we owe the early steps in the arts and sciences—­fastened leaves together or pounded out bark to make garments.  Later fibers were plucked from the sheepskin, the cocoon and the cotton-ball, twisted together and woven into cloth.  Nowadays it is possible to make a complete suit of clothes, from hat to shoes, of any desirable texture, form and color, and not include any substance to be found in nature.  The first metals available were those found free in nature such as gold and copper.  In a later age it was found possible to extract iron from its ores and today we have artificial alloys made of multifarious combinations of rare metals.  The medicine man dosed his patients with decoctions of such roots and herbs as had a bad taste or queer look.  The pharmacist discovered how to extract from these their medicinal principle such as morphine, quinine and cocaine, and the creative chemist has discovered how to make innumerable drugs adapted to specific diseases and individual idiosyncrasies.

In the later or creative stages we enter the domain of chemistry, for it is the chemist alone who possesses the power of reducing a substance to its constituent atoms and from them producing substances entirely new.  But the chemist has been slow to realize his unique power and the world has been still slower to utilize his invaluable services.  Until recently indeed the leaders of chemical science expressly disclaimed what should have been their proudest boast.  The French chemist Lavoisier in 1793 defined chemistry as “the science of analysis.”  The German chemist Gerhardt in 1844 said:  “I have demonstrated that the chemist works in opposition to living nature, that he burns, destroys, analyzes, that the vital force alone operates by synthesis, that it reconstructs the edifice torn down by the chemical forces.”

It is quite true that chemists up to the middle of the last century were so absorbed in the destructive side of their science that they were blind to the constructive side of it.  In this respect they were less prescient than their contemned predecessors, the alchemists, who, foolish and pretentious as they were, aspired at least to the formation of something new.

It was, I think, the French chemist Berthelot who first clearly perceived the double aspect of chemistry, for he defined it as “the science of analysis and synthesis,” of taking apart and of putting together.  The motto of chemistry, as of all the empirical sciences, is savoir c’est pouvoir, to know in order to do.  This is the pragmatic test of all useful knowledge.  Berthelot goes on to say: