SKETCH OF M. PIERRE E. BERT HELOT. 113 



rison. That flint, which now serves me in the office of a paper-weight, 

 is far ruder, simpler, and more ineffective than any weapon or imple- 

 ment at present in use among the lowest savages. Yet with it, I 

 doubt not, some naked black fellow, by the banks of the Thames, 

 has hunted the mammoth among unbroken forests two hundred 

 thousand years ago and more ; with it he has faced the angry cave- 

 bear, and the original and only genuine British lion (for everybody 

 knows that the existing mongrel heraldic beast is nothing better than 

 a bastard modification of the leopard of the Plantagenets). Nay, I 

 have very little doubt in my own mind that with it some aesthetic an- 

 cestor has brained and cut up for use his next-door neighbor in the 

 nearest cavern, and then carved upon his well-picked bones an interest- 

 ing sketch of the entire performance. The Du Mauriers of that remote 

 age, in fact, habitually drew their society pictures upon the personal 

 remains of the mammoth or the man whom they wished to caricature 

 in deathless bone-cuts. The other paper-weight is a polished neolithic 

 tomahawk, belonging to the period of the mound-builders, who suc- 

 ceeded the Glacial epoch, and it measures the distance between the 

 two levels of civilization with great accuracy. It is the military 

 weapon of a trained barbaric warrior as opposed to the universal im- 

 plement and utensil of a rude, solitary, savage hunter. Yet how 

 curious it is that, even in the midst of this " so-called nineteenth cent- 

 ury," which perpetually proclaims itself an age of progress, men 

 should still prefer to believe themselves inferior to their original an- 

 cestors, instead of being superior to them ! The idea that man has 

 riser is considered base, degrading, and positively wicked ; the idea 

 that he has fallen is considered to be immensely inspiring, ennobling, 

 and beautiful. For myself, I have somehow always preferred the 

 boast of the Homeric Glaucus, that we, indeed, maintain ourselves to 

 be much better men than ever were our fathers. Cornhill Magazine. 



-*- 



SKETCH OF M. PIERRE E. BERTHELOT. 



"TNTIL a few years ago, investigation in organic chemistry was 

 vJ pursued almost wholly by the road of analysis. As Gerhardt 

 wrote in his treatise: "The chemist did everything in opposition to 

 living Nature. He burned, destroyed, and worked by taking apart, 

 while the vital force operated by synthesis or putting together, to 

 reconstruct the edifice which chemical forces would destroy." The 

 chemist was, in fact, a great destroyer. He could isolate the essence 

 from a flower, and could destroy that essence and determine its chem- 

 ical composition, but he was powerless to reconstruct the destroyed 

 perfume, and could not even conceive that such a thing was possible. 

 It is the chief title to fame of M. Berthelot that he introduced the 



VOL. XXVII. 8 



