Chemistry Reference
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liarities of Christian theology. If the divine creator creates humans in his
own image, as
Genesis
1:27 says, then human imitation of the creator's
creation, including the comparison of divine and human capacities, is the
natural consequence (Noble 1997). In addition, medieval theologians
strictly confined alchemy in particular and technology in general to the
imitation of nature, to the effect that alchemists tried to investigate and
apply the secrets of the divine creation in their laboratory (Schummer
2003). Thus, accusations of hubris are always dubious, because what is
forbidden is at the same time demanded, such that the concept lacks a
consistent ethical and theological basis. As we will see in this section,
this lack of ethical arguments proper called for additional literary efforts,
the offspring of which is the 'mad scientist'.
Before dealing with the hubris theme in nineteenth-century literature,
I would like to start with an early example in which the related imitation-
of-nature theme is developed with regard to chemistry. Despite his ut-
most perversion, Donatien Alphonse François de Sade (1740-1814) had a
philosophical feeling for the weakness of woolly traditional notions,
which made him, in the view of many modern historians, a prominent
child of the Enlightenment. In the third part of
La nouvelle Justine ou Les
malheurs de la vertu
(1797), we find de Sade in Sicily experiencing rap-
tures about the destructive power of the fire-spewing volcano Aetna and
wishing to copy its disastrous effects for his own 'sadistic' inclination.
38
Suddenly, a chemist appears who confesses that he shares the same en-
thusiasm. This chemist, called Almani, explains at length how his scien-
tific studies have revealed to him the evil and destructive character of na-
ture, including the secrets of her devastating power. During the past
twenty years, he has used this knowledge to imitate nature's destructive
effects to the detriment of humans, and now offers de Sade his chemical
assistance in the imitation of the volcano. Thus, the two of them start
building their artificial volcanoes, bombs with which they eventually kill
25,000 Sicilians, as de Sade proudly states.
Whatever one might think about de Sade, he was one of the first au-
thors who employed a chemist, instead of the medieval alchemist, in his
novel - a 'sadistic' chemist who cynically drives the old imitation-of-
38
See also Krätz 1990, pp. 74f. for this scene.
