he had access to the rarest books, among others the works of Bernoulli and Euler. When the puny and 
delicate child first asked the librarian for these works the good M. Daburon exclaimed, “Do you 
understand the works of Bernoulli and Euler? Reflect, my little friend. These works rank among the 
most abstruse the human mind has ever produced.” “I hope, nevertheless, to be able to understand 
them,” replied the child. “You are aware, I presume, they are written in Latin,” added the 
librarian.  
This revelation for a moment disheartened our young and future associate; he had not yet studied 
the Latin language. It is unnecessary to tell you now that at the end of a few weeks this obstacle 
was removed. What Ampère sought above all things were questions to fathom and problems to solve, 
even in his earlier studies. The word tongue or language (langue) in the 
ninth volume of the encyclopedia transported him to the banks of the Euphrates and to the Tower of 
Babel of biblical celebrity. There he found men speaking all the same language. A miracle related by 
Moses suddenly produced the confusion. Each tribe spoke from that time a distinct language. These 
languages mingled and became corrupt, and lost by degrees that character for simplicity, regularity, 
and grandeur which distinguished the common stock. To discover this original language, or at least 
to reconstruct it with its ancient attributes, was a problem certainly very difficult, but the young 
student did not consider it beyond his powers. 
Great philosophers had already been engaged in this work. In order to give a complete history of 
their attempts, it would be necessary to go back to that King of Egypt, who, if we can believe 
Herodotus, caused two children to be brought up in absolute seclusion with only a goat as nurse, and 
who then had the simplicity to be astonished that these children should bleat. The word 
bécos proceeding more or less distinctly from their mouths, he considered the Phrygians, 
in whose language is found the word beck, (bread,) best qualified to be thought the most 
ancient race of the world. 
Among the modern philosophers who have interested themselves in the primitive language, and in the 
means of restoring it, Descartes and Leibnitz occupy, incontestably, the first places. The problem, 
as these men of genius treated it, was not merely to improve the musical qualities of modern 
languages, to simplify their grammar and to banish from them all irregularities and exceptions. They 
supposed it to consist especially of a kind of analysis of the human mind, of the classification of 
ideas, and of the complete and exact enumeration of those which should be considered elementary. By 
means of a language built upon such a foundation, “the peasants,” said Descartes, “would be 
better judges of the truth of things than are the philosophers now.” Leibnitz expressed the same 
idea in different terms, when he wrote that “the universal language would add more to the powers 
of reasoning than the telescope to the eye, or the magnetic needle to the progress of navigation.” 
No one would be so presuming as to affirm that young Ampère treated