EULOGY ON AMPERE. I5l 



Into two kingdoms 5 



Into four sub-kingdoms ; 



Into eight branches 5 



Into sixteen sub-branches ; 



Into thirty-two sciences of the first order; 



Into sixty-four of the second order; 



Into one hundred and twenty-eight of the third order. 



This is what it wonkl be necessary to study in order to be perfectly 

 familiar with the whole range of human knowledge. 



Ought not this large number to be at the same time a subject of 

 discouragement to individuals taken separately, and a just cause of 

 pride to the human race "^ Neither one nor the other. Ampere only 

 succeeded in finding one hundred and twenty-eight distinct sciences in 

 the acciunulated labors of forty centuries by dividing and separating 

 what bad until then been united; by changing into distinct sciences the 

 simple divisions of the complete sciences, and by applying to them names 

 which might well be objected to, such as canolbology cyhernitics, tcr- 

 2)no(j)wsi/, teclDiesthetics, etc., etc. 



Tt now remains to examine whether the new divisions are not too 

 numerous; whether they would add to clearness — a quality to be sought 

 at any price — and whether they would introduce any facilities into the 

 art of teaching. There is scarcely a professor who does not understand 

 now that the most elementary course of astronomy should first present 

 to the student a description of the apparent motions of the heavenly 

 bodies ; that, on a second division, it is necessary to leave the apparent 

 for the real ; and that a third division, finally, should be devoted to 

 the investigation and study of the phj'sical causes of these movements. 

 Here are three parts of one and the same whole. I do not see, I 

 must confess, what would be gained by making, of tlie first section of 

 the first course of the subject or treatise, a distinct science, vranogrcqjhy, 

 and by dividing the second subject into two other sciences heliostatics 

 and astronomy. 



Our illustrious associate banished from the course of general physics 

 the comparative study of the modifications experienced by phenomena 

 in different places and at difi'erent times. If this referred to profounder 

 study the thesis could be sustained. But on a contrary supposition, it 

 would be difiicidt to conceive how, after having announced that to-day, 

 at Paris, the north point of the magnetic needle declined 22^ from the 

 north to the west, the professor could stop suddenly and leave to his 

 colleague, the professor of i)hysical geography, the office of declaring, the 

 year after, perhaps, that at Paris, before IGGG, the observers found no 

 declination; that it is not the same at all places, and that at each place, 

 considered apart, it exhibits a diurnal oscillation around its mean posi- 

 tion. 



Ampere found the union of the materia-medica and therapeutics in the 

 aiedical course inadmissible. It is very true that a knowledge of tlio 



