Note 1064 — Chapter VII

The struggle between these rival theories, and the ease with which a man of such immense powers as Young was put down, and, as it were, suppressed, by those ignorant pretenders who presumed to criticize him, will be related in another part of this work, as a valuable illustration of the history and habits of the English mind. At present the controversy is finished, so far as the advocates of emission are concerned; but there are still difficulties on the other side, which should have prevented Dr. Whewell from expressing himself with such extreme positiveness on an unexhausted subject. This able writer says: ‘The undulatory theory of light; the only discovery which can stand by the side of the theory of universal gravitation, as a doctrine belonging to the same order, for its generality, its fertility, and its certainty.’ Whewell's Hist. of the Induc. Sciences, vol. ii. p. 425; see also p. 508.