The Soul in Nature

THE LIFE OF H. C. OERSTED.

external demeanor won all hearts. Among the distinguished men with whom he had intercourse in Germany, we may especially mention Schelling, the two brothers Schlegel, Fichte, Schleiermacher, Tieck, Z. Werner, Fr. Baader, Erman, Kielmeier, Rumford, and the mineralogists Hausmann and Weiss. However, he became most intimately acquainted with the celebrated physicist Ritter, who was then at the height of his fame. At a later period, Oersted had an opportunity to do him a great service.

In the winter of 1802–1803, he spent some time in Paris, where he diligently studied and mastered the French language and literature. It was at this time that Ritter, having discovered his "Pile" German: "Ladungsäule," a charging pile or battery., sent a treatise about it to Oersted, written in his characteristically obscure style, with the request that he translate it into French so that it could compete for the annual prize of the French Institute. Oersted agreed and performed the task so well that Ritter afterwards asserted "that he understood the translation better than his own writing," so thoroughly had Oersted’s flexible mind familiarized itself with the thoughts and methods of the German physicist. While the merits of the discovery were not appreciated by the Institute at that time, they were more fully recognized later.

Oersted returned from Paris in 1803 via Brussels, Leyden, Haarlem, and Amsterdam. At home, he continued to be considered more a natural philosopher than a physicist, and for that reason, he could not obtain the chair of physics, which was then vacant. However, he received an income of 300 bankthalers from the public purse for three years, along with an equal sum for experimental purposes. The university had at that time lost all the instruments belonging to the laboratory and those used for natural philosophy in a fire; however,