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 which 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 hieroglyphics. 



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 



