Foucault's great countryman, Ampère (died 1836), the celebrated investigator in the fields of electricity, was also estranged from the Christian religion, but, after passing through torturing doubts, he regained undisturbed possession of his Catholic faith, and was a pious Christian at the time of his brilliant discoveries. He had frequent intercourse with A. F. Ozanam, and the discussion almost without exception turned to God. Then Ampère would cover his forehead with his hands, exclaiming: “How great God is! Ozanam! how great God is, and our knowledge is as nothing.” “This venerable head,” Ozanam relates of his friend, “covered with honours and full of knowledge, bowed down before the mysteries of the faith; he knelt at the same altars where before him Descartes and Pascal worshipped humbly, beside the poor widow and the small child, who perhaps were less humble than he” (A. F. Ozanam, Oeuvres Complètes, X, 37, and VIII, 89). As he was dying, and M. Deschamps, director of the college of Marseille, began to read aloud some passages from the “Imitation of Christ,” the dying man remarked that he knew the book by heart.
Another great discoverer in the domain of electricity, who had preceded Ampère, was Volta (died 1827). Like his great fellow countryman, Galvani (died 1798), who did not disdain to be a member of the third order of St. Francis, Volta was a staunch Catholic; every day he recited the rosary.
At Como, his home, he was daily seen to go to holy Mass and, on holidays, to the Sacraments. Those who passed his house on Saturdays saw a small lamp burning before the picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary over his door. If the servant forgot to light the lamp, Volta did it himself. On Feast days, when visiting the parish church, the great electrician could be seen among the children, explaining the catechism to them.
A friend of Volta, the Canon Giacomo Ciceri, once was endeavoring to convert a dying man, who, however, refused to hear him, on the ground that whereas religion might be good for the common people, [pg 213]scientists did not need it, and he reckoned himself among them. Cicerithereupon reminded him of Volta. This made an impression upon the dying man, who declared that if Volta be seriously religious, and not only as a matter of convention, he would consent to receive the Sacraments. The Canon then requested Volta to write a few lines. Volta replied as follows: “I do not understand how anybody can doubt my sincerity and constancy in the religion which I profess, and which is that of Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church, wherein I was born and raised, and which I have professed all my life, inwardly and outwardly.... Should any misdemeanor on my part have prompted any one to suspect me of unbelief, then I will declare, for the purpose of making reparation ... that I always have believed this Holy Catholic religion to be the only true and infallible one, and that I still think so, and I thank our dear Lord incessantly for having given me this belief, in which to live and to die is my resolution, in the firm hope of gaining the eternal life. It is true, I acknowledge this belief to be a gift of God, a supernatural belief; yet, I have not neglected human means to fortify myself in this belief, and to drive away all doubts that may arise to tempt me. For this reason, I have studied the faith diligently in its foundations, by reading apologetic and controversial writings, weighing the reasons for and against; a way, which supplies the strongest proof, and makes it most credible for the human reason to such a degree, that any noble mind, not perverted by sins and passions, cannot help embracing and loving it. I wish this profession, for which I was asked and which I willingly make, written and signed by my own hand, to be shown at will to any one, because I am not ashamed of the Gospel. May my writing bear good fruit.
Alexander Volta.
Milan, January 6th, 1815.
(C. Grandi, Alessandro Volta, 1899, 575.)”
He who, for the first time, is made aware of the religious confession of the greatest natural scientists may perhaps be astonished. Hitherto, he had heard little of the Christian mind of these men, but a great deal about their alleged indifference for religion, and about their materialism and atheism. Now, suddenly, he sees a large number of them to be the enemies of atheism, many, indeed, to be zealous Christians.
This is due to the biographers: they dwell largely on the scientific achievement of a man, likewise on his human qualities, but his religion is often not mentioned at all. When, in 1888, a monument was erected to Ampère in his native city, Lyons, not a word in the speeches referred to the fact that he was a faithful Catholic. Nay, more; on one of the books seen on his monument is chiselled in bold letters the word “Encyclopédie.” [pg 214] Those unaware of the facts would infer that Ampère had been one of the Encyclopædists. His actual relation to this infamous work was that he had read it in his youth, but abhorred it in his later age.
The English physicist, Faraday (died 1867), according to Tyndall and Du Bois-Reymond the greatest experimentist of all times, was, like Volta and Ampère, of religious mind.