EULOGY ON AMPERE. 149 



merit ; it is clear and categorical. Je vous attends a I'escargot," (I shall 

 wait to see you a modified snail.) 



Ampere entered, for a few moments very good naturedly into the 

 gaiety provoked in all present by this sally ; but he soon began to treat 

 seriously the laughable question just proposed to him; his manner of 

 handling it showed the most i)rolound research, and the most compre- 

 hensive knowledge of anatomy and natural history, and where the 

 first step seemed to lead to absurdities, he pointed out resemblances 

 and analogies so ingenious that we were surprised to find ourselves not 

 regretting that the term of comparison oftered to Ampere had been se- 

 lected so far down in the scale of animal life. 



ESSAY ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES. 



The literary life of Ampere began by the study of the Encyclopedia of 

 the Eighteenth Century, and was closed by the compilation of a plan for 

 a new encyclopedia. The most essential feature of this vast scheme 

 was a classification of all human knowledge. 



Moliere formerly, through the medium of one of the characters of his 

 immortal comedies, asked whether it were more correct to speak of the 

 figure or the shape of a hat ; which was equivalent to asking whether 

 hats should be classed as to shapes or figures. 



The abuse of classification could not possibly be described at the same 

 time more profoundly and more ludicrously. To go back to the time of 

 Moliere, or even to the early part of the eighteenth century, you will see 

 the great poet was not attacking a vain phantom, and you will be struck 

 with the strangest association of ideas ; you will find the classifiers 

 yielding to the most truly absurd analyses and comparisons; for ex- 

 ample, in the Society of Arts, created by a prince of the blood, Comte 

 de Clermont, a society embracing the sciences, belles-lettres, and the 

 mechanical arts, the historian is classed, in all seriousness, with the em- 

 broiderer, the poet with the dyer, etc., etc. 



In all things abuse is not use. Let us see, then, whether Ampere 

 paused at the use, in the work, still only partly published, which he 

 composed at the close of his life, and entitled, Essay on the Philosophy 

 of the Sciences ; or Analytical Exposition of a Natural Classification of 

 all Human Knowledge. 



Ampere proposed to undertake the vast and celebrated problem whose 

 solution had already been attempted by Aristotle, Plato, Bacon, Leib- 

 nitz, Locke, D'Alembert, &c. 



The unsnccessfal eiforts of so many men of genius are a convincing 

 proof of the difficulty of the question ; do they also completely prove 

 its utility"? 



Aristotle claimed that all subjects could be included in ten categories. 

 If I should recall the number of times they have been rearranged, the 

 reply would very reasonably be, these were the necessary and foreseen 

 consequences of the progress of the human mind. I should then, un- 



