he eyes of one of the
greatest of French chemists, Berthelot, this is what we shall see:

The problem of food is a chemical problem. Whenever energy can
be obtained economically we can begin to make all kinds of
aliment, with carbon borrowed from carbonic acid, hydrogen
taken from the water and oxygen and nitrogen drawn from the
air.... The day will come when each person will carry for his
nourishment his little nitrogenous tablet, his pat of fatty
matter, his package of starch or sugar, his vial of aromatic
spices suited to his personal taste; all manufactured
economically and in unlimited quantities; all independent of
irregular seasons, drought and rain, of the heat that withers
the plant and of the frost that blights the fruit; all free
from pathogenic microbes, the origin of epidemics and the
enemies of human life. On that day chemistry will have
accomplished a world-wide revolution that cannot be estimated.
There will no longer be hills covered with vineyards and fields
filled with cattle. Man will gain in gentleness and morality
because he will cease to live by the carnage and destruction of
living creatures.... The earth will be covered with grass,
flowers and woods and in it the human race will dwell in the
abundance and joy of the legendary age of gold--provided that a
spiritual chemistry has been discovered that changes the nature
of man as profoundly as our chemistry transforms material
nature.

But this is looking so far into the future that we can trust no man's
eyesight, not even Berthelot's. There is apparently no impossibility
about the manufacture of synthetic food, but at present there is no
apparent probability of it. There is no likelihood that the laboratory
will ever rival the wheat field. The cornstalk will always be able to
work cheaper than the chemist in the manufacture of starch. But in rarer
and choicer products of nature the chemist has proved his ability to
compete and even to excel.

What have been from the dawn of history to the rise of synthetic
chemistry the most costly products of nature? What could tempt a
merchant to brave the perils of a caravan journey over the deserts of
Asia beset with Arab robbers? What induced the Portuguese and Spanish
mariners to risk their frail barks on perilous waters of the Cape of
Good Hope or the Horn? The chief prizes were perfumes, s