240 ELEMENTARY SCIENCE 



but biology (the science of life) will make the greatest con- 

 tribution of the future to his welfare. Already biology has 

 contributed much to the science of health and to the 

 science of agriculture, but the great contribution which it 

 may make in the future is the artificial manufacture of food. 

 For do you not see that if man is once able to understand 

 that process that goes on in every green leaf, and to du- 

 plicate it, then the food problem is forever solved? It is 

 simply a question of taking certain simple and abundant 

 inorganic materials and transforming them into carbo- 

 hydrates. It sounds simple enough, and it is a thing which 

 occurs constantly all about us, wherever light and green 

 leaves come together, and yet man, with all his clever con- 

 trivances and "harnessing" of nature, has never yet been 

 able even faintly to imitate the process of the leaf whereby 

 it "harnesses" sunlight and thereby works the great trans- 

 formation of inorganic into organic. 



Of course this idea of the artificial manufacture of food 

 is purely speculation, and may never occur. Yet con- 

 sideration of it should help us to realize how great is our 

 dependence upon plants. They are partners in life with 

 us, and we, with them, live only as we are related rightly 

 to the great inorganic forces and substances of the uni- 

 verse, out of which somehow, mysteriously, we have 

 come, in the midst of which for a very little time we live, 

 and into which our bodies will surely be gathered again 

 when we go. 



