UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY




"As this paper contains nothing which deserves the name either of
experiment or discovery, and as it is, in fact, destitute of every
species of merit, we should have allowed it to pass among the
multitude of those articles which must always find their way into the
collections of a society which is pledged to publish two or three
volumes every year. . . . We wish to raise our feeble voice against
innovations, that can have no other effect than to check the progress
of science, and renew all those wild phantoms of the imagination
which Bacon and Newton put to flight from her temple."--Opening
Paragraph of a Review of Dr. Young's Bakerian Lecture. Edinburgh
Review, January 1803, p. 450.

"Young's work was laid before the Royal society, and was made the
1801 Bakerian Lecture. But he was before his time. The second
number of the Edinburgh Review contained an article levelled against
him by Henry (afterwards Lord) Brougham, and this was so severe an
attack that Young's ideas were absolutely quenched for fifteen years.
Brougham was then only twenty-four years of age. Young's theory was
reproduced in France by Fresnel. In our days it is the accepted
theory, and is found to explain all the phenomena of light."--Times
Report of a Lecture by Professor Tyndall on Light, April 27, 1880.


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