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230 THE WILL IN NATURE.
less to repeat them here ; I will merely add that I have
since been assured on trustworthy authority that Dr.
Brandis not only knew my work but even possessed it, as
it was found among his property after his death. The un
merited obscurity to which writers like myself are long
condemned, encourages such people to appropriate their
thoughts without so much as naming them.
Another medical authority has carried this even farther ;
for, not content with the thought alone, he has appropriated
to himself the expression of it also. I allude to Professor
Anton Rosas of the University of Vienna, whose entire
507 in the 1st vol. of his Textbook of Ophthalmology 2
(1830) is copied word for word from pp. 14-16 of my
"
"
treatise On Vision and Colours (1816) without any
mention whatever of me, or even the slightest hint that he
is using the words of another. This sufficiently accounts
for the care he has taken not to mention my treatise among
the lists of twenty-one writings on Colours and forty on the
Physiology of the Eye, which he gives in 542 and 567 ;
a caution which was however all the more advisable, as he
had appropriated to himself a good deal more out of that
pamphlet without mentioning me. All that is referred, for
instance, in 526 to them (man), is only applicable to me.
His entire 527 is copied almost literally from my pp. 59
and 60. The theory which he introduces without further cere
mony in 535 by the word "evidently" : that is, that yellow
is f and violet i of the eye s activity, never was evident
to anyone until I made it so ;
even to this day it is a truth
known to few and acknowledged by fewer still, and much is
yet wanting for example, that I should be dead and
buried ere it be possible to call it evident without
further ceremony. The matter will even have to wait till
after my death to be seriously sifted, since a close investi
gation might easily bring to evidence the real difference
1
Rosas,
"
" JIumlbuch der Augenheilkunde (1830).