NEW CONCEPTIONS IN SCIENCE 



pains have been spent in the hope of reducing 

 these simple bodies to others simpler still, but af- 

 ter half a century of effort they remain intact. 

 Chemically, no element has ever been quartered 

 and drawn. 



But by the time Balard's new preparateur took 

 up his work the elements and the substances com- 

 pounded of them had been marked off in two dis- 

 tinct worlds. The one was inorganic, lifeless; the 

 other organic, living. From these two worlds two 

 chemistries sprang. 



Long before Liebig a distinction had been noted 

 between the substances of the mineral world the 

 earth we tread, the tools we use, and those of the 

 living world, the things we eat and the stuff we 

 are. The mineral compounds are simple ; they are 

 easy to take apart, to analyze, but they are made 

 up from a wide number of elements ; indeed, many 

 of the minerals we know copper, mercury, iron, 

 gold, silver, lead are elements themselves. And 

 they are rather easy to put together to make the 

 familiar things we know and use. A metal, sodium, 

 with oxygen makes soda, with chlorine, table-salt. 

 The oxygen, exploded with hydrogen, forms water ; 

 the chlorine with hydrogen gives hydrochloric acid. 

 Inorganic synthesis is not difficult. 



With the living world it is different. Even its 

 simpler products sugar, starch, butter, oils are 



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