How deeply interested Ampère became in metaphysics will perhaps be best appreciated from the fact that, for progress in metaphysics, exercise in disputation is needed, and had been the custom in the old medieval universities. Ampère once made an arrangement to travel from Paris to Lyons and stay there for some time, provided a definite promise was made that at least four afternoons a week should be devoted to discussions on ideology. The journey to Lyons, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles, was no easy undertaking in those days. The Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean Express now whirls one down to the capital of the silk district in a night; but in Ampère's time, it took many days, and the journey was by no means without inconveniences, which were likely to be so troublesome that a prolonged rest was needed after it was over. Ampère seems quite to have exhausted the interest of his friends in Lyons, who found his metaphysical speculations too high for them, though they themselves were specializing in the subject and would be glad to tempt him into discussions of the exact sciences; but in lyrical strain he apostrophizes psychological studies: "How can I abandon the country, the flowers and running waters for the arid streets of the city! How give up streams and groves for deserts scorched by the rays of a mathematical sun, which, diffusing over all surrounding objects the most brilliant light, withers and dries them down to the very roots! How much more agreeable to wander under flitting shades, where truth seems to flee before us to incite us to pursue, than walk in straight paths where the eye embraces all at a glance!" Had Ampère been less successful as a mathematician or an investigator of physical science, these expressions would seem little short of ridiculous. As it is, they provide food for thought. Ampère seemed to realize that, for the intellectual man, the only satisfaction was not in successful research so much as in application of mind to what promised results. As in everything else, it was the chase, and not the capture, that counted. Seldom has this idea been applied to intellectual things with so much force as it seems to have appealed to Ampère, and one is reminded of Malebranche's famous expression, "If I had truth in my hand, I would be tempted to let it go for the pleasure of recapturing it."