the rotatory drum received him, and he would soon have finished the task if, wishing to complete the 
experiment, I had not caused him to be removed in order to give the refractory dog a new trial. The 
refractory dog, whose turn had now come, obeyed the first signal of the cook, entered the 
rustic turn-spit without resistance, and went to work like a squirrel in its cage. 
“Does it not follow from this, my dear Ampère, that dogs can have the consciousness of the just 
and the unjust, leading them to lay out a rule for themselves, and to endure corporal punishment 
rather than allow any violation of it?” 
Ampère’s features so keenly expressed the interest he took in the recital that you might have 
fancied he was about to exclaim with Lactance, “Except in matters of religion, the brute creation 
share all the advantages of the human race.” However, our associate did not press the matter as 
far as the Christian Cicero. While modifying his former views on instinct, he merely 
admitted that animated beings, taken in the aggregate, exhibit every possible degree of 
intelligence, from the lowest up to that which, to adopt the expression of Voltaire, might inspire 
with jealousy the familiars of Jove himself. 
I shall not leave this subject without giving another example to show in spite of his extreme 
animation in discussion in the main, how true and tolerant Ampère was, and how free from the 
malevolent passions that unconceived ideas and conceit usually bring in their train. In some 
manuscript notes of a professor of Lyons, M. Bredin, with whom Ampère studied the metaphysical 
doctrine of the absolute, I find these exact words: “Very animated discussions daily arose 
between us, and in them originated that holy and indissoluble friendship which has so 
firmly united us.” 
A writer of romance would fancy he was doing violence to probability by placing friendship among 
the possible consequences of heated discussions. A presumption so unparalleled could only be 
tolerated in the land of fable. 

MATHEMATICAL LABORS OF AMPÈRE.
 
Such a man as Ampère often puts the self-love of his biographer to a severe trial. I was obliged 
just now to shrink from psychological researches whose importance and depth I could not reach; and 
here again I am forced to confess that an intelligible analysis, in common language, of the works of 
our associate on pure mathematics, is beyond my powers. Nevertheless, as in these works figure the 
memoirs which, alter the death of Lagrange in 1813, opened the doors of the Academy to our friend, 
they ought to be mentioned, if only by their titles. 
The adventurous mind of Ampère was always fond of questions that the fruitless efforts of twenty 
centuries had pronounced insoluble; he was never happier, if I may be allowed the expression, than 
when