SYNTHETIC CHEMISTRY 



to be a historian, a politician, a writer of philosoph- 

 ical works, a minister of state, and quite as ready 

 for a shindy with his favorite enemies, the clericals, 

 as was ever Huxley himself. 



M. Berthelot is a scholar as well as a savant. No 

 one has delved so deeply in the lore of the old 

 alchemists as he, and from his pen translations of 

 texts from Greek, Arabic, Latin, have come; solid 

 volumes of history, too. He is a radical of radicals ; 

 for him, science shall not merely " yield a deeper 

 knowledge of the universe and a new conception 

 of human destiny ; to-day it claims the direction at 

 once material, intellectual, and moral of society." 

 Several volumes of essays bear witness to the in- 

 tensity of his views. Altogether his literary pro- 

 duction is prodigious, more than most lives devoted 

 wholly to letters may show. And he possesses a 

 style replete with all that suavity and limpid charm 

 which is the pride of the French race. The life- 

 long friendship for Renan must have left its im- 

 press here. 



And he has mingled in political life as well 

 militantly and aggressively. He has been a senator 

 of France for twenty years, twice Minister of Public 

 Instruction and Fine Arts, then Minister of Foreign 

 Affairs. He has long been the perpetual Secretary 

 of the Academy of Sciences, in some sense the offi- 

 cial head of French science. He is an orator, and, 



IQI 



