Makers of Electricity

by Brother Potamian; James J. Walsh

It may be pointed out that the same thing happened with regard to Ohm, only it was much more serious. Years of Ohm's life were wasted because of the refusal of his contemporaries to accept his "law" at his valuation. Arago, in his life of Ampère, recalls that when Fresnel discovered the transverse character of waves of light, his observations created the same doubts and uncertainty in the same individuals who a few years later refused to accept Ampère's conclusions. Arago puts it, that as he was ambitious of a high place in the world of ideas, he should have expected to find his adversaries precisely those already occupying the highest places.

Ampère never looked on himself as a mere specialist in physical science, however, and it is extremely interesting to know that he dared to take sides in a discussion between Cuvier and Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, with regard to the unity of structure in organized beings. While the purely physical scientists mostly sat mute during the discussion, Ampère took an active share in it, and ventured to subject himself to what perhaps, above all things, a Frenchman dreads, the ridicule of his colleagues. Arago thought that he held his own very well in this discussion, which involved some of the ideas that were afterwards to be the subject of profound study and prolonged investigation later in the nineteenth century, because of the announcement of the theory of evolution.

After his discoveries in electricity Ampère came to be acknowledged as one of the greatest of living scientists, and was honored as such by most of the distinguished scientific societies of Europe. His work was not confined to electricity alone, however, and late in life he prepared what has been well called a remarkable work on the classification of the sciences. This showed that, far from being a mere electrical specialist or even a profound thinker in physics, he understood better probably than any man of his time the interrelations of the sciences to one another. He was a broad-minded, profound thinker in the highest sense of the words, and in many things seems to have had almost an intuition of the intimate processes of nature; a sharer in secrets as yet unrevealed, though he was at the same time an untiring experimenter, eminently successful, as is so evident in his electrical researches, in arranging experiments so as to compel answers to the questions which he put to nature.

In the midst of all this preoccupation of mind with science and all the scientific problems that were working in men's minds in his time, from the constitution of matter to the nature of life, above all engaged in experimental work, he was a deeply religious man in his opinions and practices. He had indeed the simple piety of a child. During the awful period of the French Revolution, he had some doubts with regard to religious truths; but once these were dispelled, he became one of the most faithful practical Catholics of his generation. He seldom passed a day without finding his way into a church, and his favorite form of prayer was the rosary.

Frederick Ozanam tells the story of how he himself, overtaken by misgivings with regard to faith, and roaming almost aimlessly through the streets of Paris trying to think out solutions for his doubts, and the problems that would so insistently present themselves respecting the intellectual foundations of Christianity, finally wandered one day into a church, and found Ampère there in an obscure corner, telling his beads. Ozanam himself was moved to do the same thing, for Ampère was then looked upon as one of the greatest living scientists of France. Under the magic touch of an example like this and the quiet influence of prayer, Ozanam's doubts vanished, never to return.

Saint-Beuve, whose testimony in a matter like this would surely be unsuspected of any tendency to make Ampère more Catholic than he was, in his introduction to Ampère's essay on the Philosophy of the Sciences (Paris, 1843), says:

"The religious struggles and doubts of his earlier life had ceased. What disturbed him now lay in less exalted regions. Years ago, his interior conflicts, his instinctive yearning for the Eternal, and a lively correspondence with his old friend, Father Barrett, combined with the general tendency of the time of the Restoration, had led him back to that faith and devotion which he expressed so strikingly in 1803.... During the years which followed, up to the time of his death, we were filled with wonder and admiration at the way in which, without effort, he united religion and science; faith and confidence in the intellectual possibilities of man with adoring submission to the revealed word of God."

Ozanam, to whose thoroughly practical Christianity while he was professor of Foreign Literatures at the University of Paris we owe the foundation of the Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul, which so long anticipated the "settlement work" of the modern time and have done so much for the poor in large cities ever since, was very close to Ampère, lived with him indeed for a while, said that, no matter where conversations with him began, they always led up to God. The great French scientist and philosopher used to take his broad forehead between his hands after he had been discussing some specially deep question of science or philosophy and say: "How great is God, Ozanam! How great is God and how little is our knowledge!" Of course this has been the expression of most profound thinkers at all times. St. Augustine's famous vision of the angel standing by the sea emptying it out with a teaspoon, which has been rendered so living for most of us by Botticelli's great picture, is but an earlier example of the same thing. One of Ampère's greatest contemporaries, Laplace, re-echoed the same sentiment, perhaps in less striking terms, when he declared that what we know is but little, while what we do not know is infinite.

For anyone who desires to study the beautiful Christian simplicity of a truly great soul, there is no better human document than the "Journal and Correspondence of Ampère," published some years after his death. He himself wrote out the love story of his life; and it is perhaps one of the most charming of narratives, certainly the most delightful autobiographic story of this kind that has ever been told. It is human to the very core, and it shows a wonderfully sympathetic character in a great man, whose work was destined a few years later to revolutionize physics and to found the practical science of electro-dynamics.

When Ampère's death was impending, it was suggested that a chapter of the "Imitation of Christ" should be read to him; but he said, no! declaring that he preferred to be left alone for a while, as he knew the "Imitation" by heart and would repeat those chapters in which he found most consolation. With the profoundest sentiments of piety and confidence in Providence, he passed away June 10th, 1836, at Marseilles.