EULOGY ON AMPERE. 14"? 



AMPi^RE TAKES PART IN A CELEBRATED DISCUSSION BETWEEN GEORGE 

 CLTTIER, AND GEOFFROY SAINT-HILAIRE ON THE UNITY" OP STRUC- 

 TURE IN ORGANIZED BEINGS. 



This discussion rested on some very nice considerations. If it were 

 desired, for instance, to trace the resemblance between the arrange- 

 ments of the viscera of a cephalopodic monusk and those of man, it 

 wonld be necessary to fancy the latter bent backwards from the line of 

 the navel, so that the pelvis and lower limbs should be joined to the 

 nape of the neck; it would be necessary, moreover, to imagine man 

 walking on his head. Other comparisons required that one of the two 

 animals should be reversed like a glove; that the bonj^ structure should 

 pass from within to without, that the enveloped shonld become the en- 

 velope, etc., etc. The members of the mathematical department of the 

 college could take no part in this subtle debate ; they were satisfied to 

 be attentive listeners. Ampere alone threw himself headlong into the 

 arena. But it was found that the views so warmly opposed by Cuvier, 

 and so decidedly sustained by our honorable colleague, Geoffroy Saint- 

 Hilaire, were those entertained by Ampere in 1803. 



Cuvier, the learned secretary of the academy, when concluding his 

 course on the history of the sciences of the nineteenth centurj^, was 

 naturally led to allude to the German school known under the name of 

 Philosoi^liers of Nature. 



The principles of the philosophers of nature, at least those referring 

 to the unity of structure in animals, appearing to him erroneous, he 

 undertook to oppose them. Ampere was one of the auditors of our illus- 

 trious colleague. If, as at the Normal Convential School, the students 

 had the right to challenge the professors, each lecture of Ouvier's course 

 would assuredly have ended in an animated and instructive debate ; 

 but the regulations imperiously forbade such an innovation. Ampere 

 was not the man to be discouraged by difficulties. Custom denying 

 him permission to speak in the arena where Cuvier was unfolding his 

 views, openly without leaving the precincts of the college founded by 

 Francis the First, if not on the same day, at least during the same week, 

 when delivering his course onMathcsiologie, Ampdre broadly announced 

 himself, with reference to the chief point of philosophic zoology, the 

 declared adversary of the first naturalist of Europe. In each of his lec- 

 tures he gave a minute and detailed criticism of the preceding lecture 

 of Cuvier. But in return, Cuvier regularly used an analysis of Ampere's 

 argument, made by his brother Frederic, who attended the course on 

 Mathesiologie, as the text for each succeeding one of those lectures, 

 'whose glorious memory will long be preserved by the" College of France, 

 and in which shone in the same high degree, his talent for explaining, 

 his knowledge of facts in detail, and must it be avowed, his art of ren- 

 dering sarcasm cutting without overstej)ping the limits of a well-bred 

 critic. Each week Ampere would seem felled by the blows of the new 



