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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.


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