BERTHELOT 149 



some day will discover something that will make the 

 world independent of wheat and meat. Berthelot be- 

 lieved in the possibility of wheat-growing and cattle- 

 raising being superseded by the discovery of artificial 

 substitutes for the necessaries of life. It may seem to 

 the uninitiated a mere dream, but to the chemists this 

 vision of the future is quite within the bounds of 

 possibility. Chemistry in the past sixty years has done 

 more to make mankind independent of Nature than all 

 the other agencies in the world since the beginning of 

 time. This is a big statement, but it is literally true. 

 Chemistry, by its application to agriculture this past 

 half-century, has doubled the world's producing power, 

 has, in fact, put Nature in harness and made her do 

 double work by the stimulation of growth. 



It is only within the past sixty years that synthetic 

 chemistry has come to take its proper place in the 

 scientific world : what a powerful instrument of research 

 it has proved ; and this is due to the original stimulus 

 given to it by Berthelot. Berthelot's idea of the 

 synthesis of substances that will take the place of wheat 

 and meat is the most audacious flight of fancy that 

 scientific imagination has ever yet taken, but it need not, 

 because of that, be classed among the impossibilities. 

 Berthelot was justified by accomplished facts in stating 

 that applied science has done more for mankind in the 

 last three-quarters of a century than all the progress in 



