Few men of the nineteenth century are so interesting as AndrÉ Marie AmpÈre, who is, as we have seen, deservedly spoken of as the founder of the science of electro-dynamics. Extremely precocious as a boy, so that, like his immediate predecessor in discovery, Oersted the Dane, his rapid intellectual development drew down upon him ominous expressions from those who knew him, he more than fulfilled the highest promise of his early years. His was no one-sided genius. He was interested in everything, and his memory was as retentive as his intellect was comprehensive. He grew up, indeed, to be a young man of the widest possible interests. Literature never failed to have its attraction for him, though science was his favorite study and mathematics his hobby. The mathematical mind is commonly supposed to run in very precise grooves, yet AmpÈre was always a speculator, and his speculations were most suggestive for his contemporaries and subsequent generations. Indeed, his mathematics, far from being a hindrance to his penetrating outlook upon the hazier confines of science, rather seemed to help the penetrations it gave. While he was so great a scientist that Arago, so little likely to exaggerate his French contemporary's merit, has said of AmpÈre's discovery identifying magnetism and electricity, that "the vast field of physical science perhaps never presented so brilliant a discovery, conceived, verified, and completed with such rapidity," his friends knew this great scientist as one of the kindliest and most genial of men, noted for his simplicity, his persuasive sympathy and his tender regard for all those with whom he was brought into intimate relations.

The commonly accepted formula for a great scientist, that he is a man wrapt up in himself and his work, enmeshed so completely in the scientific speculations that occupy him that he has little or no time for great humanitarian interests, so that his human sympathies are likely to atrophy, is entirely contradicted by the life of AmpÈre. He was no narrow specialist, and, indeed, it may be said that not a single one of these great discoverers in electricity whom we are considering in this volume was of the type that is sometimes accepted as indicative of scientific genius and originality. After reading their lives, one is prone to have the feeling that men who lack that wider sympathy which, in the famous words of the old Latin poet, makes everything human of interest to them, are not of the mental calibre to make supreme discoveries, even though they may succeed in creating a large amount of interest in their scientific speculations in their own generation. It is the all-round man who does supreme original work of enduring quality.

AndrÉ Marie AmpÈre was born at Lyons, January 22d, 1775. His father, Jean Jacques AmpÈre, was a small merchant who made a comfortable living for his family, but no more. His father and mother were both well informed for their class and time, and were well esteemed by their neighbors. His mother especially was known for an unalterable sweetness of character and charitable beneficence which sought out every possible occasion for its exercise. She was universally beloved by those who knew her, and the charm of AmpÈre's manner, which made for him a friend of every acquaintance, was undoubtedly a manifestation of the same family strain.

Shortly after the birth of their son, the parents gave up business and retired on a little property situated in the country not far from Lyons. It was in this little village, without any school-teacher and with only home instruction, that the genius of the future savant, who was to be one of the distinguished scientific men of the nineteenth century, began to show itself. For AmpÈre was not only a genius, but, what is so often thought to be an almost absolute preclusion of any serious achievement later in life, a precocious genius. The first marvelous faculty that began to develop in him was an uncontrollable tendency to arithmetical expression. Before he knew how to make figures, he had invented for himself a method of doing even rather complicated problems in arithmetic by the aid of a number of pebbles or peas. During an illness that overtook him as a child, his mother, anxious because of the possible evil effects upon his health of mental work, took his pebbles away from him. He supplied their place, however, during the leisure hours of his convalescence, when time hung heavy on his child hands, by bread crumbs. He craved food, but, according to the "starving" medical rÉgime of the time, he was allowed only a single biscuit in three days. It required no little self-sacrifice on his part, then, to supply himself with counters from this scanty supply, and his persistence, in spite of hunger, evidently indicates that this mathematical tendency was stronger than his appetite for food. This is all the more surprising, since children are usually scarcely more than little animals in the matter of eating, and commonly satisfy their physical cravings without an after-thought of any kind.

AmpÈre learned to read when but very young, and then began to devour all the books which came to hand. Usually, the precocious taste for reading specializes on some particular subject; but everything was grist that came to the child AmpÈre's mental mill, and it was all ground up; and, strangest of all, much of it was assimilated. Travel, history, poetry, occupied him quite as much as romance; and, amazing as it may appear, even philosophy was not disdained while he was still under ten years of age. It seems amusing to read the declaration of the French biographer, that if this boy of ten had any special predilection in literature, it was for Homer, Lucan, Tasso, FÉnelon, Corneille and Voltaire, yet it must be taken seriously.

When he was about fifteen, this omnivorous intellectual genius came across a French encyclopedia in twenty folio volumes. This seemed to him a veritable Golconda of endless riches of information. Each of the volumes had its turn. The second was begun as soon as the first was finished, and the reading of the third followed, and so on, until every one of the volumes had been completely read. References to other volumes might be looked up occasionally, but this did not distract him into taking other portions of the works out of alphabetical order. Surprising as it must seem, most of this heterogeneous mass of information, far from being forgotten at once, was deeply engraved on his wonderful memory. More than once in after-life, when many years had passed, it was a surprise to his friends to find how much information AmpÈre had amassed on some abstruse and unfamiliar subject, and how readily he was able to pour forth details of information that seemed quite out of his line. He would then confess that the encyclopedia article on the subject, read so many years before, was still fresh in his mind, or at least that its information was so stored away as to be readily available. We have heard much of Gladstone's memory in more recent years; but that seems to have been nothing compared to this wonderful faculty which recalled for AmpÈre, even as an old man, the unrelated details of every encyclopedia article that had passed under his eyes half a century before, when he was a boy of ten to fourteen.

The modest family library soon proved utterly insufficient to occupy the mind of this young, enthusiastic student; and his father, sympathetic to his ardent curiosity, took him to Lyons from time to time, where he might have the opportunity to consult volumes of various kinds that might catch his fancy. At this time, his old mathematical tendency reasserted itself. He wished to learn something about the higher mathematics. He found in a library in Lyons the works of Bernoulli and of Euler. When the delicate-looking boy, whom the librarian considered little more than a child, put in his request to the town library for these serious mathematical works, the old gentleman said to him: "The works of Bernoulli and Euler! What are you thinking of, my little friend? These works figure among the most difficult writings that ever came from the mind of man." "I hope to be able to understand them," replied the boy. "I suppose you know," said the librarian, "that they are written in Latin." This was a disagreeable surprise for young AmpÈre. As yet he had not studied Latin. He went home, resolved, however, to remove this hindrance to his study of the higher mathematics. At the end of the month, owing to his assiduity, the obstacle had entirely disappeared; and though he could read only mathematical Latin and had later to study the language from another standpoint, in order to understand the classics, he was now able to pursue the study of mathematics in Latin to his heart's content.

The even tenor of the boy's life, deeply engaged as he was in studies of every description, was destined to be very seriously disturbed. When he was but fourteen, in 1789, the Revolution came, with its glorious promise and then its awful consummation. AmpÈre's father was seriously alarmed at the revolutionary course things were taking in France, and had the fatal inspiration to leave his country home and betake himself to the city of Lyons. For a time, he occupied a position as magistrate. After the siege of Lyons, the revolutionary tribunal established there took up the project of making the Lyonnese patriotic, as they called it, by properly punishing the citizens for their failure to sympathize at first with the revolutionary government, and soon a series of horrible massacres began. New victims were claimed every day, and AmpÈre's father was one of those who had to suffer. The real reason for his condemnation was that he had accepted a position under the old government, though the pretext stated on the warrant for his arrest was that he was an aristocrat. This is the only evidence we have that the AmpÈre family was in any way connected with the nobility. The day on which he was sentenced to die, Jean Jacques AmpÈre wrote to his wife a letter of sublime simplicity, in which his Christian resignation of spirit, his lofty courage, yet thoroughly practical commonsense, are manifest. He warned his wife to say nothing about his fate to their daughter Josephine, though he hoped that his son would be better able to stand the blow, and perhaps prove a consolation to his mother.

The news proved almost too much for the young AmpÈre, and for a time his reason was despaired of. All his faculties seemed to be shocked for the moment into insensibility. Biographers tell us that he wandered around, building little piles of sand, gazing idly at the stars or vacantly into space, wearing scarcely any of the expression of a rational being. His friends could harbor only the worst possible expectations for him, and even his physical health suffered so much that it seemed he would not long survive. One day, by chance, Rousseau's "Letters on Botany" fell into his hands. They caught his attention, and he became interested in their charming narrative style, and as a result, his reason awoke once more. He began to study botany in the field, and soon acquired a taste for the reading of LinnÆus. At the same time, classic poetry, especially such as contained descriptions of nature, once more appealed to him, and so he took up his classical studies. He varied the reading of the poets with dissections of flowers, and yet succeeded in following both sets of studies so attentively that, forty years afterward, he was still perfectly capable of taking up the technical description of the plants that he had then studied, and while acting as a university inspector, he composed 150 Latin verses during his horseback rides from one inspection district to another, without ever having to consult a gradus or a dictionary for the quantities, yet without making a single mistake. His memory for subjects once learned, was almost literally infallible.

Something of his love for nature can be appreciated from an incident of his early manhood, which is not without its amusing side. AmpÈre was very near-sighted, and had been able to read books all his life only by holding them very close to his eyes. This makes it all the more difficult to understand how he succeeded in reading so much. His near-sightedness was so marked that he had no idea of beauties of scenery beyond him, and was often rather put out at the enthusiastic description of scenes through which he passed en diligence, when his fellow-travelers spoke of the beauties of the scenes around them. AmpÈre, like most people who do not share, or at least appreciate, the enthusiasm of others for beautiful things around them, was in this mood, mainly because he was not able to see them in the way that others did, and, therefore, could not have the same pleasure in them. This lack in himself was unconscious, of course, as in all other cases, and, far from lessening, rather emphasized the tendency to be impatient with others, and rather made him more ready to think how foolish they were to go into ecstasies over something that to him was so insignificant.

One day, while AmpÈre was making the journey along the Saone into Lyons, it happened that there sat beside him on the stage-coach a young man who suffered from near-sightedness very nearly in the same degree as AmpÈre himself, but whose myopia had been corrected by means of properly fitting glasses. These glasses were just exactly what AmpÈre needed in order to correct his vision completely. The young fellows became interested in each other, and, during the course of their conversation, his companion suggested to AmpÈre, seeing how near-sighted he was, that he should try his glasses. He put them on, and at once nature presented herself to him under an entirely different aspect. The vision was so unexpected, that the description which he had so often heard from his fellow-travelers, but could not appreciate, now recurred to him, and he could not help exclaiming in raptures, "Oh! what a smiling country! What picturesque, graceful hills! How the rich, warm tones are harmoniously blended in the wonderful union of sky and mountain vista!" All of these now spoke emphatically to his delicate sensibility, and a new world was literally revealed to him. AmpÈre was so overcome by this unexpected sight, which gave him so much pleasure, that he burst into tears from depth of emotion, and could not satisfy himself with looking at all the beauties of nature that had been hidden from him for so long. Ever after, natural scenery was one of the greatest pleasures that he had in life, and the beauties of nature, near or distant, meant more to him than any other gratification of the senses.

In spite of the fact that AmpÈre had devoted considerable attention to acoustics as a young man, and had studied the ways in which the waves of air by which sounds are formed and propagated, he had absolutely no ear for music, and was as tone-deaf as he had been blind before his discovery with regard to the glasses. Musical notes constituted a mathematical problem for AmpÈre, but nothing more. This continued to be the case until about thirty years of age. Then, one day, he attended a musical soirÉe, at which the principal portions of the program were taken from GlÜck. It is easy to understand that this master of harmony possessed no charms for a tone-deaf young man. He became uneasy during the course of the musical program, and his uneasiness became manifest to others. After the selections of the German composer were finished, however, some simple but charming melodies were unexpectedly introduced, and AmpÈre suddenly found himself transported into a new world. If we are to believe his biographers, once more his emotion was expressed by an abundance of tears, which AmpÈre seems to have had at command and to have been quite as ready to give way to in public as any of Homer's heroes of the olden time. Blind until he was nearly twenty, he used to say of himself, he had been deaf until he was thirty. In spite of his failure to respond in youth, once it had been awakened to appreciation, his soul vibrated profoundly to all the beauties of color and sound, and, later in life, they gave rise in him to depths of emotion which calmer individuals of less delicate sensibilities could scarcely understand, much less sympathize with.

Between his two supreme experiences in vision and sound, there had come to AmpÈre another and even profounder emotion. He tells the story himself, in words that probably express his feelings better than any possible description of his biographer could do, and that show us how wonderfully sensitive his soul was to emotion of all kinds. He had just completed his twenty-first year when he fell head over heels in love. Though he wrote very little, as a rule, he has left us a rather detailed description in diaries, evidently kept for the purpose, of the state of his feelings at this time. These bear the title, "Amorum," the story of his love. On the first page these words occur: "One day as I was taking an evening walk, just after the setting of the sun, making my way along a little brook," then there is a hiatus, and he was evidently quite unable to express all that he felt. It seems that he was gathering botanical specimens, wearing an excellent set of spectacles ever since his adventure on the stage-coach had shown him the need of them, when he suddenly perceived at some distance two young and charming girls who were gathering flowers in the field. He looked at one of them, and he knew that his fate was sealed. Up to that time, as he says, the idea of marriage had never occurred to him. One might think that the idea would occur very gently at first, then grow little by little; but that was not AmpÈre's way. He wanted to marry her that very day. He did not know her name; he did not know her family; he had never even heard her voice, but he knew that she was the destined one.

Fortunately for the young lady and himself, she had very sensible parents. They demanded how he would be able to support a wife. AmpÈre was quite willing to do anything that they should suggest. His father had left enough to support the family, but not enough to enable him to support a wife in an independent home; and until he had some occupation, the parents of his bride-to-be refused to listen to his representations. For a time, he consented to be a salesman in a silk store in Lyons, in order to have some occupation which might eventually give him enough money to enable him to marry. Fortunately, however, he was diverted from a commercial vocation which might thus have absorbed a great scientist, and arrangements were made which permitted him to continue his intellectual life, yet have the woman of his choice. She was destined to make life happier far for him than is the usual lot of man, and he was ever ready to acknowledge how much she meant for his happiness.

With literature, poetry, love and settling down in life to occupy him, it is hard to think of AmpÈre as a young man doing great work in science, but he did; and his work deservedly attracted attention even from his very early years. It was in pure mathematics, perhaps, above all other branches, that AmpÈre attracted the attention of his generation. Ordinary questions he did not care for. Problems which the fruitless efforts of twenty centuries had pronounced insoluble attracted him at once. Even the squaring of the circle claimed his attention for a while, though he got well beyond it even before his boyhood passed away. There is a manuscript note from the Secretary of the Academy of Lyons, which shows that on July 8th, 1788, AmpÈre, then not quite thirteen years of age, addressed to that learned body a paper on the "Squaring of the Circle." Later, during the same year, he submitted an analogous memoir, entitled, "The Rectification of an Arc of a Circle, less than a Semi-circumference."

Arago says that he was tempted to suppress this story of AmpÈre's coquetting with so dangerous a problem, for AmpÈre rather flattered himself that he had almost solved it. It was only after Arago recalled how many geniuses in mathematics had occupied themselves with this same problem, that he saw his way clearly not to share the scruples of those who might think this incident a reflection on AmpÈre's mathematical genius. After all, Anaxagoras, Hippocrates, Archimedes and Apollonius, among the ancients, and among the moderns, Willebrod Snell, Huyghens, Gregory, Wallis, and finally Newton, the mathematician of the heavens, occupied themselves seriously with this very problem. Arago even notes that some men, by their speculations on the squaring of the circle, were led to distinguished discoveries, and mentions the name of Father GrÉgoire de Saint-Vincent, the distinguished Flemish mathematician of the Society of Jesus, to whom, as a direct result of his studies in attempted circle-squaring, we owe the discovery of the properties of hyperbolic space, limited by the curve and its asymptotes, as well as the expansion of log (1 + x) in ascending powers of x. Montucla, the historian of mathematics, writing of PÈre Saint-Vincent, said that, "No one ever squared the circle with so much ability or with so much success." There was, however, a fallacy in his magnificent work which was pointed out by the celebrated Huyghens.

Shortly after the beginning of the nineteenth century, AmpÈre, as one of his French biographers rather characteristically declares, redeemed whatever of mathematical sinning there might have been, in indulging in fond dalliance with the squaring of the circle, by a series of mathematical papers, each of which was in itself a distinct advance on previous knowledge, and at the same time, definite evidence of his mathematical ability. The first paper, published in 1801, was a contribution to solid geometry, bearing the title, "On Oblique Polyhedrons." His next paper, written in 1803, though not published until 1808, was a treatise on the advantages to be derived in the theory of curves from due consideration of the osculating parabola. Another treatise, written about the same time, had for title, "Investigations on the Application of the General FormulÆ of the Calculus of Variations to Problems in Mechanics." This concerned problems which had interested and, in most cases, proved too hard of solution even for such men as Galileo, Jacques Bernoulli, Leibnitz, Huyghens and Jean Bernoulli. Arago's expression with regard to this work is: "The treatise of AmpÈre contains, in fact, new and very remarkable properties of the catenary (la chainette) and its development." He adds: "There is no small merit in discovering hiatuses in subjects explored by such men as Leibnitz, Huyghens and the two Bernoullis. I must not forget to add that the analysis of our associate unites elegance with simplicity."

It is not surprising, after such marks of mathematical genius, that AmpÈre was appointed to the chair of mathematics at the École Polytechnique, where he came to be looked upon as one of the most distinguished of French mathematicians. In 1813, he became a candidate for the position left vacant by the death of the famous Lagrange; and at this time, presented to the Academy general considerations on the integration of partial differential equations of the first and the second order. After his election to the Academy, AmpÈre continued to present important papers at its various sessions. Among these, three are especially noteworthy: one was a demonstration of PÈre Mariotte's law (known to English students as Boyle's law); another bore the title, "Demonstration of a new Theory from which can be deduced all the Laws of Refraction, ordinary and extraordinary"; a third was a memoir on the "Determination of the curved surfaces of Luminous Waves in a medium whose Elasticity differs in each of the three dimensions."

In his eulogy of AmpÈre, which, together with his article in the "Dictionnaire Universelle de Biographie," we have followed rather closely, Arago calls particular attention to the fact that in Paris, AmpÈre moved in two intellectual circles quite widely separated in their interests and sympathies. Among the first group, were the members of the old "Institute" and professors and examiners of the École Polytechnique and professors of the CollÈge de France. In the other, were the men whose names have since become widely known as students of psychology, of whom Cabanis may be taken as the representative. AmpÈre had as great a passion for psychology, and was as ready to devote himself to fathoming and analyzing the mysteries of the mind, as he was to work out a problem in advanced mathematics, or throw light on difficult questions in the physical sciences. These two sets of interests are seldom united in the same man, though occasionally they are found. At the end of the nineteenth century, we had the spectacle of very distinguished men of science in physics, and even in biology—Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, Professor Charles Richet, Professor Lombroso and even Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace—interested in psychic and spiritualistic manifestations of many kinds as well as in natural science; and, inasmuch as they did so, they would have found AmpÈre a brother spirit. AmpÈre indeed dived rather deeply into what would be called, somewhat slightingly, perhaps, in our generation, metaphysical speculation. At one time, he contemplated the publication of a book which was to be called "An Introduction to Philosophy." He had made elaborate theories with regard to many metaphysical questions, and had written articles on "The Theory of Relations," "The History of Existence," "Subjective and Objective Knowledge" and "Absolute Morality." Arago calls attention to the fact that Napoleon's famous anathema against ideology, far from discouraging AmpÈre, rather seemed to stimulate him in his studies, and he declared that it would surely contribute to the propagation of this kind of speculation, rather than to its suppression. It was simply another case of Napoleon overreaching himself, though this was in the domain of ideas and not in the realm of politics, where his fate was to reach him some time later.

How deeply interested AmpÈre became in metaphysics will perhaps be best appreciated from the fact that, for progress in metaphysics, exercise in disputation is needed, and had been the custom in the old medieval universities. AmpÈre once made an arrangement to travel from Paris to Lyons and stay there for some time, provided a definite promise was made that at least four afternoons a week should be devoted to discussions on ideology. The journey to Lyons, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles, was no easy undertaking in those days. The Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean Express now whirls one down to the capital of the silk district in a night; but in AmpÈre's time, it took many days, and the journey was by no means without inconveniences, which were likely to be so troublesome that a prolonged rest was needed after it was over. AmpÈre seems quite to have exhausted the interest of his friends in Lyons, who found his metaphysical speculations too high for them, though they themselves were specializing in the subject and would be glad to tempt him into discussions of the exact sciences; but in lyrical strain he apostrophizes psychological studies: "How can I abandon the country, the flowers and running waters for the arid streets of the city! How give up streams and groves for deserts scorched by the rays of a mathematical sun, which, diffusing over all surrounding objects the most brilliant light, withers and dries them down to the very roots! How much more agreeable to wander under flitting shades, where truth seems to flee before us to incite us to pursue, than walk in straight paths where the eye embraces all at a glance!"

Had AmpÈre been less successful as a mathematician or an investigator of physical science, these expressions would seem little short of ridiculous. As it is, they provide food for thought. AmpÈre seemed to realize that, for the intellectual man, the only satisfaction was not in successful research so much as in application of mind to what promised results. As in everything else, it was the chase, and not the capture, that counted. Seldom has this idea been applied to intellectual things with so much force as it seems to have appealed to AmpÈre, and one is reminded of Malebranche's famous expression, "If I had truth in my hand, I would be tempted to let it go for the pleasure of recapturing it."

The principal source of AmpÈre's fame, however, for future generations, was to be in his researches in the science of electro-dynamics. The name of this science will ever be inseparably linked with that of AmpÈre, its founder. It was for that reason, of course, that the International Congress of Electricians decided to give his name to the unit of current strength, so that it has now become a household word, and will continue so for ages to come. In spite of the resemblances, much more than superficial, between magnetism and electricity, the identification of these two with each other seemed as yet very distant. It is curiously interesting, however, to note that AmpÈre himself, in a program of his course, printed in 1802, announced that the "professor will demonstrate that electrical and magnetic phenomena must be attributed to two different fluids which act independently of each other." AmpÈre's fame was to be founded on the direct contradiction of this proposition, which he proposed and triumphantly defended by a marvelous series of experimental illustrations eighteen years later. In the meantime, the discovery of another distinguished scientist, doing his work many hundreds of miles away, was to prove the stimulus to AmpÈre's constructive imagination, so as to enable him to fill out many obscure points of knowledge with regard to magnetism and electricity.

This suggestive discovery was that of Oersted, the sketch of whose life and work immediately precedes this. Oersted demonstrated that a current of electricity will affect a magnetic needle. This epoch-making discovery reached Paris by way of Switzerland. The experiment was repeated before the French Academy of Sciences by a member of the Academy of Geneva, on September 11th, 1820. The date has some importance in the history of science, for just seven days later, on the 18th of September, AmpÈre presented, at the session of the Academy of Sciences, a still more important fact, to which he had been led by the consideration of Oersted's discovery while testing it by way of control experiment. This brilliant discovery of AmpÈre, Arago summed up in these words: "Two parallel conducting wires attract each other when the current traverses them in the same direction. On the contrary, they repel each other when the current flows in opposite directions. The phenomenon described by Oersted was called, very appropriately, electromagnetic, whilst the phenomena described by AmpÈre, in which the magnet played no part, received at his suggestion the general name of electro-dynamics, which has since been applied to them."

At first it was said that these phenomena were nothing more than manifestations of the ordinary attractive and repelling power of the two forms of electricity which had been so carefully studied, especially in France, during the eighteenth century. AmpÈre at once disposed of any such idea as this, however, by pointing out that bodies similarly electrified repel each other, whilst those that are in opposite electrical states attract each other. In the case of conductors conveying currents, there is attraction when these are in the same direction, and repulsion when they flow in the opposite direction. This reasoning absolutely precluded all possibility of further doubt in the matter, and this particular form of objection to AmpÈre's discoveries was dropped at once.

Having satisfactorily disposed of other objections, AmpÈre was content neither to rest quietly in his discovery nor merely to develop various experimental phases of it which would be extremely interesting and popularly attractive, but which at the same time might mean very little for science. With his mathematical mind, AmpÈre resolved to work out a mathematical theory which would embrace not only all the phenomena of magnetism then known, but also the complete theory of the science of electro-dynamics. Needless to say, such a problem was extremely difficult. Arago has compared it to Newton's solution of the problem of gravitation by mathematics. Considering the comparatively small amount of data that AmpÈre had at his command, this problem might very well be compared to that which Leverrier took up with so much success, when he set about discovering by calculation only the planet Neptune, as yet unknown, which was disturbing the movements of Uranus.

It might be thought that these discoveries of AmpÈre would be welcomed with great enthusiasm. As a matter of fact, however, new discoveries that are really novel always have, as almost their surest index, the fact that contemporaries refuse to accept them. The more versed a man is in the science in which the discovery comes, the more likely is he to delay his acceptance of the novelty. This is not so surprising, since, as a rule, new discoveries are nearly always very simple expressions of great truths that seem obvious once they are accepted, yet have never been thought of. They mean, therefore, that men who consider themselves distinguished in a particular science have missed some easily discoverable phenomenon or its full significance, and so, to accept a new discovery in their department of learning men must confess their own lack of foresight.

It may be pointed out that the same thing happened with regard to Ohm, only it was much more serious. Years of Ohm's life were wasted because of the refusal of his contemporaries to accept his "law" at his valuation. Arago, in his life of AmpÈre, recalls that when Fresnel discovered the transverse character of waves of light, his observations created the same doubts and uncertainty in the same individuals who a few years later refused to accept AmpÈre's conclusions. Arago puts it, that as he was ambitious of a high place in the world of ideas, he should have expected to find his adversaries precisely those already occupying the highest places.

AmpÈre never looked on himself as a mere specialist in physical science, however, and it is extremely interesting to know that he dared to take sides in a discussion between Cuvier and Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, with regard to the unity of structure in organized beings. While the purely physical scientists mostly sat mute during the discussion, AmpÈre took an active share in it, and ventured to subject himself to what perhaps, above all things, a Frenchman dreads, the ridicule of his colleagues. Arago thought that he held his own very well in this discussion, which involved some of the ideas that were afterwards to be the subject of profound study and prolonged investigation later in the nineteenth century, because of the announcement of the theory of evolution.

After his discoveries in electricity AmpÈre came to be acknowledged as one of the greatest of living scientists, and was honored as such by most of the distinguished scientific societies of Europe. His work was not confined to electricity alone, however, and late in life he prepared what has been well called a remarkable work on the classification of the sciences. This showed that, far from being a mere electrical specialist or even a profound thinker in physics, he understood better probably than any man of his time the interrelations of the sciences to one another. He was a broad-minded, profound thinker in the highest sense of the words, and in many things seems to have had almost an intuition of the intimate processes of nature; a sharer in secrets as yet unrevealed, though he was at the same time an untiring experimenter, eminently successful, as is so evident in his electrical researches, in arranging experiments so as to compel answers to the questions which he put to nature.

In the midst of all this preoccupation of mind with science and all the scientific problems that were working in men's minds in his time, from the constitution of matter to the nature of life, above all engaged in experimental work, he was a deeply religious man in his opinions and practices. He had indeed the simple piety of a child. During the awful period of the French Revolution, he had some doubts with regard to religious truths; but once these were dispelled, he became one of the most faithful practical Catholics of his generation. He seldom passed a day without finding his way into a church, and his favorite form of prayer was the rosary.

Frederick Ozanam tells the story of how he himself, overtaken by misgivings with regard to faith, and roaming almost aimlessly through the streets of Paris trying to think out solutions for his doubts, and the problems that would so insistently present themselves respecting the intellectual foundations of Christianity, finally wandered one day into a church, and found AmpÈre there in an obscure corner, telling his beads. Ozanam himself was moved to do the same thing, for AmpÈre was then looked upon as one of the greatest living scientists of France. Under the magic touch of an example like this and the quiet influence of prayer, Ozanam's doubts vanished, never to return.

Saint-Beuve, whose testimony in a matter like this would surely be unsuspected of any tendency to make AmpÈre more Catholic than he was, in his introduction to AmpÈre's essay on the Philosophy of the Sciences (Paris, 1843), says:

"The religious struggles and doubts of his earlier life had ceased. What disturbed him now lay in less exalted regions. Years ago, his interior conflicts, his instinctive yearning for the Eternal, and a lively correspondence with his old friend, Father Barrett, combined with the general tendency of the time of the Restoration, had led him back to that faith and devotion which he expressed so strikingly in 1803.... During the years which followed, up to the time of his death, we were filled with wonder and admiration at the way in which, without effort, he united religion and science; faith and confidence in the intellectual possibilities of man with adoring submission to the revealed word of God."

Ozanam, to whose thoroughly practical Christianity while he was professor of Foreign Literatures at the University of Paris we owe the foundation of the Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul, which so long anticipated the "settlement work" of the modern time and have done so much for the poor in large cities ever since, was very close to AmpÈre, lived with him indeed for a while, said that, no matter where conversations with him began, they always led up to God. The great French scientist and philosopher used to take his broad forehead between his hands after he had been discussing some specially deep question of science or philosophy and say: "How great is God, Ozanam! How great is God and how little is our knowledge!" Of course this has been the expression of most profound thinkers at all times. St. Augustine's famous vision of the angel standing by the sea emptying it out with a teaspoon, which has been rendered so living for most of us by Botticelli's great picture, is but an earlier example of the same thing. One of AmpÈre's greatest contemporaries, Laplace, re-echoed the same sentiment, perhaps in less striking terms, when he declared that what we know is but little, while what we do not know is infinite.

For anyone who desires to study the beautiful Christian simplicity of a truly great soul, there is no better human document than the "Journal and Correspondence of AmpÈre," published some years after his death. He himself wrote out the love story of his life; and it is perhaps one of the most charming of narratives, certainly the most delightful autobiographic story of this kind that has ever been told. It is human to the very core, and it shows a wonderfully sympathetic character in a great man, whose work was destined a few years later to revolutionize physics and to found the practical science of electro-dynamics.

When AmpÈre's death was impending, it was suggested that a chapter of the "Imitation of Christ" should be read to him; but he said, no! declaring that he preferred to be left alone for a while, as he knew the "Imitation" by heart and would repeat those chapters in which he found most consolation. With the profoundest sentiments of piety and confidence in Providence, he passed away June 10th, 1836, at Marseilles.

With all his solid piety, this man was not so distant from ordinary worldly affairs as not to take a lively interest in all that was happening around him and, above all, all that concerned the welfare of men. He was especially enthusiastic for the freedom of the South American Republics, eagerly following the course of Bolivar and Canaris, and rejoicing at the success of their efforts. South American patriots visiting Paris found a warm welcome at his hands, and also introductions that made life pleasant for them at the French capital. His house was always open to them, and no service that he performed for them seemed too much.

AmpÈre was beloved by his family and his friends; he was perhaps the best liked man among his circle of acquaintances in Paris because of the charming geniality of his character and his manifold interests. He was kind, above all, to rising young men in the intellectual world around him, and was looked up to by many of them as almost a second father. His charity towards the poor was proverbial, and this side of his personality and career deserves to be studied quite as much as what he was able to accomplish for science. The beauty of his character was rooted deeply in the religion that he professed, and in our day, when it has come to be the custom for so many to think that science and faith are inalterably opposed, the lesson of this life, so deeply imbued with both of these great human interests, deserves to be studied. Ozanam, who knew him best, has brought out this extremely interesting union of intellectual qualities, in a passage that serves very well to sum up the meaning of AmpÈre's life.

"In addition to his scientific achievements," says Ozanam, "this brilliant genius has other claims upon our admiration and affection. He was our brother in the faith. It was religion which guided the labors of his mind and illuminated his contemplations; he judged all things, science itself, by the exalted standard of religion.... This venerable head which was crowned by achievements and honors, bowed without reserve before the mysteries of faith, down even below the line which the Church has marked for us. He prayed before the same altars before which Descartes and Pascal had knelt; beside the poor widow and the small child who may have been less humble in mind than he was. Nobody observed the regulations of the Church more conscientiously, regulations which are so hard on nature and yet so sweet in the habit. Above all things, however, it is beautiful to see what sublime things Christianity wrought in his great soul; this admirable simplicity, the unassumingness of a mind that recognized everything except its own genius; this high rectitude in matters of science, now so rare, seeking nothing but the truth and never rewards and distinction; the pleasant and ungrudging amiability; and lastly, the kindness with which he met everyone, especially young people. I can say that those who know only the intelligence of the man, know only the less perfect part. If he thought much, he loved more."