In the later or creative stages we enter the domain of chemistry, for it
is the chemist alone who possesses the power of reducing a substance to
its constituent atoms and from them producing substances entirely new.
But the chemist has been slow to realize his unique power and the world
has been still slower to utilize his invaluable services. Until recently
indeed the leaders of chemical science expressly disclaimed what should
have been their proudest boast. The French chemist Lavoisier in 1793
defined chemistry as "the science of analysis." The German chemist
Gerhardt in 1844 said: "I have demonstrated that the chemist works in
opposition to living nature, that he burns, destroys, analyzes, that the
vital force alone operates by synthesis, that it reconstructs the
edifice torn down by the chemical forces."
It is quite true that chemists up to the middle of the last century were
so absorbed in the destructive side of their science that they were
blind to the constructive side of it. In this respect they were less
prescient than their contemned predecessors, the alchemists, who,
foolish and pretentious as they were, aspired at least to the formation
of something new.
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