1.02 EULOGY ON AMPERE. 



properties of .medicine is quite diiiereut from knowing how to apj)ly 

 them ; but when you consider that the properties in question would be 

 but little studied but for the purpose of relieving human suffering; that 

 their union under both points of view, abstract and practical, sustains 

 the interest and saves time, you return to what at iirst seemed defect- 

 ive. " Life is short, and art is long." These memorable words of Hip- 

 pocrates, let me add, whose truth has not been impaired by the mate- 

 ria-medica or therapeutics, unitedly or separately, deserve to be remem- 

 bered in the distribution of the studies of youth. 



Ampere thought he had succeeded in avoiding entirely all repetitions ; 

 he flattered himself that henceforth each science could be studied with- 

 out any trace of syllogistic circles ; that, while engaged in one study, it 

 would never be necessary to refer to the science coming after on the 

 synoptical table. 



An illustrious metaphysician did not believe this methodical course 

 possible unless in the science of abstract mathematics. Eeaders, he 

 said, must trust; they must be willing to give credit for a time, if they 

 wish to be satisfied; for geometers alone always pay cash. 



Could Ampere always pay cash, as Malebranche expresses it, even 

 in applied mathematics'? If time permitted I could easily prove, I 

 believe, that on this point our illustrious colleague deceived himself. 

 In his table I see, for example, astronomy before physics ; and, conse- 

 quently, before optics. How, then, in the first lessons of urauography 

 and the first study of the diurnal movements of the heavens, could the 

 professor explain the use of the telescopes, of the lines placed in the com- 

 mon focus between the object and eye glasses'? What could he say, 

 without asking for credit of the atmospheric refractions which so percep- 

 tibly deform the circular diurnal orbits of the stars *? All astronomers 

 "would agree with me that it is very unnatural that heliostatics, or the 

 demonstration of the Copernican system, should precede the exposition 

 of the laws of Kepler, considered as simple results of observation. 



I could multiply these remarks, but they would not prevent Ampere's 

 classification from being very superior to all those preceding it ; it would 

 require but a few suppressions and some rearrangement of points of 

 slight importance to make it asperfoct as would be compatible with the 

 nature of the subject. It can be unhesitatingly affirmed that its various 

 parts bear the indelible stamp of an erudition as remarkable for its 

 extent as its profoundness. 



Ampere had not only essayed the vast problem of a general classifi- 

 cation of the sciences, but had also been engaged in introducing classi- 

 fications into the physical and natural sciences separately. 



The chemical classifications proposed bj^ the learned academician 

 could even now be published with profit. They would prove — and how 

 strange the fact — that, during one of the last revolutions in the science, 

 Ampere, the geometer Ampere, was always in the right, even when his 

 opinions were opposed to those of nearly all the chemist^s of the world. 



