324 THOMAS YOUNG. 
tion. We then infer how much the choice of a particular 
point of view must depend on arbitrary conditions ; and, 
lastly, how much influence it will have on the definitive 
conclusion. To escape from these embarrassments I 
have sought an example in whicli the parts respectively 
played by two rival claimants for an invention may be 
assimilated to those of Champollion and Young, and 
which has, on the other hand, united all opinions. This 
example, I believe, I have found in the Interferences, 
even leaving out of the question, as regards the subject 
of the hieroglyphics, the quotations from the memoir of 
M. de Guignes. It is as follows :-— 
Hooke in fact had announced before Dr. Young that 
luminous rays interfered, just as the latter had asserted 
before Champollion that the Egyptian hieroglyphics are 
sometimes phonetic. Hooke did not prove directly his 
hypothesis ; the proof of the phonetic values assigned by 
Young to different hieroglyphics could only rest on read- 
ings which had not as yet been made and which could 
not then be made. 
From want of knowing the composition of white light, 
Hooke had not an exact idea of the nature of interfer- 
ences, as Young on his part deceived himself by an 
imagined syllabic or dissyllabic value of hieroglyphies. 
Young, by unanimous consent, is regarded as the 
author of the theory of interferences. Thence, by a 
parity of reasoning which seems to me inevitable, Cham- 
pollion ought to be regarded as the author of the discov- 
ery of hieroglyphics. 
I regret not to have sooner thought of this comparison. 
If in his lifetime Young had been placed in the alterna- 
tive of being the originator of the doctrine of inter- 
ferences, leaving the hieroglyphics to Champollion, or to 
ee 
