VISION AT DIFFERENT DISTANCES. 297 



We might fairly be astonished that this admirable the- 

 ory of vision, this combination so well framed when the 

 most ingenious reasonings and experiments lent each 

 other mutual support, did not occupy that distinguished 

 rank in the science of the country which it deserved. 

 But to explain this anomaly, must we necessarily recur 

 to a sort of fatality ? Was Young then really, as he 

 sometimes described himself with vexation, a new Cas- 

 sandra, proclaiming incessantly important truths which 

 his ungrateful contemporaries refused to receive ? We 

 should be less poetical, but more true, it seems to me, if 

 we remarked that the discoveries of Young were not 

 known to the majority of those who would have been 

 able to appreciate them. The physiologists did not read 

 his able memoir, because in it he presumes upon more 

 mathematical knowledge than is usually attained in that 

 branch. 



The physicists neglected it in their turn, because in 

 oral lectures, or printed works, the public demands little 

 more at the present day than superficial notions, which 

 an ordinary mind can penetrate without difficulty. In all 

 this, whatever our distinguished colleague may have be- 

 lieved, we perceive nothing out of the ordinary course. 

 Like all those who sound the greatest depths of science, 

 he was misunderstood by the multitude ; but the applauses 

 of some of the select few ought to have recompensed him. 

 In such a question we ought not to count the suffrages ; 

 it is more wise to iveigh them.* 



* Arago, in assigning the probable causes of the neglect of Young's 

 speculations, seems to fall short of his usual point and perspicuity. It 

 might be true that his memoir was neglected by physiologists because 

 it was mathematical, and by parity of reason it might have been neg- 

 lected by physicists and mathematicians as being physiological. But 

 it is surely no reason to say that it was neglected by physicists because 



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