114 EULOGY ON AMPERE. 



he had access to the rarest books, among others the works of Bernoulli 

 and Elder. When the puny and delicate child first asked the librarian 

 tor these works the good M. Daburon exclaimed, '' Do you understand 

 the works of Bernoulli and Euler ? Eeflect, my little friend. These 

 v/orks rank among the most abstruse the human mind has ever pro- 

 duced." " I hope, nevertheless, to be able to understand them," replied 

 the child. " You are aware, I presume, they are written in Latin," added 

 the librarian. This revelation for a moment disheartened our young 

 and future associate ; he had not yet studied the Latin language. It 

 is unnecessary to tell you now that at the end of a few weeks this obsta- 

 cle was removed. What Ampere sought above all things were ques- 

 tions to fathom and problems to solve, even in his earlier studies. The 

 word tongue or language {langue) in the ninth volume of the encyclo- 

 pedia transported him to the banks of the Euphrates and to the Tower 

 of Babel of biblical celebrity. There he found men speaking all the 

 same language. A miracle related by Moses suddenly produced the 

 confusion. Each tribe spoke from that time a distinct language. These 

 languages mingled and became corrupt, and lost by degrees that char- 

 acter for simplicity, regularity, and grandeur which distinguished the 

 common stock. To discover this original language, or at least to recon- 

 struct it with its ancient attributes, was a problem certainly very diflfi- 

 cult, but the young student did not consider it beyond his powers. 



Great philosophers had already been engaged in this work. In order 

 to give a complete history of their attempts, it would be necessary to go 

 back to that King of Egypt, who, if we can believe Herodotus, caused 

 two children to be brought up in absolute seclusion with only a goat as 

 nurse, and who then had the simplicity to be astonished that these chil. 

 dren shoidd bleat. The word tecos proceeding more or less distinctly 

 from their mouths, he considered the Phrygeans, in whose language is 

 found the word Jjeclc^ (bread,) best qualified to be thought the most 

 ancient race of the world. 



Among the modern philosophers who have interested themselves in 

 the primitive language, and in the means of restoring it, Descartes and 

 Leibnitz occupy, incontestably, the first places. The problem, as these 

 men of genius treated it, was not merely to improve the musical qualities 

 of modern languages, to simpliiy their grammar and to banish from them 

 all irregularities and exceptions. They sui^posed it to consist especially 

 of a kind of analysis of the human mind, of the classification of ideas, 

 and of the complete and exact enumeration of those which should be con- 

 sidered elementary. By means of a language built upon such a founda- 

 ion, " the peasants," said Descartes, " would be better judges of the truth 

 of things than are the philosophers now." Leibnitz expressed the same 

 idea in different terms, when he wrote that " the universal language 

 would add more to the powers of reasoning than the telescope to the 

 eye, or the magnetic needle to the progress of navigation." 



No one would be so presuming as to affirm that young Ampere treated 



