n uncertain
fragments. On the contrary, the experimental sciences have the
power to realize their conjectures.... What they dream of that
they can manifest in actuality....

Chemistry possesses this creative faculty to a more eminent
degree than the other sciences because it penetrates more
profoundly and attains even to the natural elements of
existences.

Since Berthelot's time, that is, within the last fifty years, chemistry
has won its chief triumphs in the field of synthesis. Organic chemistry,
that is, the chemistry of the carbon compounds, so called because it was
formerly assumed, as Gerhardt says, that they could only be formed by
"vital force" of organized plants and animals, has taken a development
far overshadowing inorganic chemistry, or the chemistry of mineral
substances. Chemists have prepared or know how to prepare hundreds of
thousands of such "organic compounds," few of which occur in the natural
world.

But this conception of chemistry is yet far from having been accepted by
the world at large. This was brought forcibly to my attention during the
publication of these chapters in "The Independent" by various letters,
raising such objections as the following:

When you say in your article on "What Comes from Coal Tar" that
"Art can go ahead of nature in the dyestuff business" you have
doubtless for the moment allowed your enthusiasm to sweep you
away from the moorings of reason. Shakespeare, anticipating you
and your "Creative Chemistry," has shown the utter
untenableness of your position:

Nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean: so o'er that art,
Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes.

How can you say that art surpasses nature when you know very
well that nothing man is able to make can in any way equal the
perfection of all nature's products?

It is blasphemous of you to claim that man can improve the
works of God as they appear in nature. Only the Creator can
create. Man only imitates, destroys or defiles God's handiwork.

No, it was not in momentary absence of mind that I claimed that man
could improve upon nature in the making of dyes. I not only said it, but
I proved it. I not only proved it, but I can back it up. I will give a
million dollars to anybody finding in nature dyestuffs as numerous,
varied