SUCCESS IN RESEARCH INDEPENDENT OF RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 261 



eminent investigators are to be found in most religious 

 sects, but usually most in those which are in the greatest 

 degree favourable to intellectual life : ' Ampere was a 

 Roman Catholic, and not a Koman Catholic in the con- 

 ventional sense merely, but a hearty and enthusiastic 

 believer in the doctrines of the Church of Rome. The 

 belief in transubstantiation did not prevent Ampere from 

 becoming one of the best chemists of his time, just as the 

 belief in the plenary inspiration of the New Testament 

 does not prevent a good Protestant from becoming an 

 acute critic of Greek literature generally. A man may 

 have the finest scientific faculty, the most advanced scien- 

 tific culture, and still believe the consecrated wafer to be 

 the body of Jesus Christ. For since he still believes it to 

 be the body of Christ under the apparent form of a wafer, 

 it is evident that the wafer under chemical analysis wo^Sld 

 resolve itself into the same elements as before consecra- 

 tion ; therefore why consult chemistry ? What has che- 

 mistry to say to a mystery of this kind, the essence of 

 which is the complete disguise of a human body under a 

 form in all respects answering the material semblance of 

 a wafer ? Ampere must have foreseen the certain results 

 of analysis as clearly as the best chemists educated in the 

 principles of Protestantism, but this did not prevent him 

 from adoring the consecrated host in all the sincerity of 

 his heart.' 1 



Those who wish to study more fully the mental 

 characteristics of great discoverers, and the circumstances 

 under which eminent investigators were reared and made 

 their discoveries, may with advantage read the ' Life of 

 Cavendish,' by Wilson, 2 ' Life of Newton,' ' Memoirs of 

 Newton,' and ' Martyrs of Science,' each by Sir David 



1 Hamerton, Intellectual Life, p. 220. 



2 Cavendish Society's publications. 



