Garrett.] ■^•-'-' [Oct. 21, 



which did not attract the attention of others. His methods of thinking 

 were swift, and led him to undemonstrated skips in his reasoning which 

 made it difficult to follow him. In the ordinary processes of addition, he 

 footed up columns of eight or ten nvimbers, extending into trillions, 

 instantaneously, setting down the result from left to right, ending with 

 the units. A certain instinctive or intuitive faculty pervaded his demon- 

 strations, interrupting their purely mathematical character, and making 

 many mathematicians and physicists plausibly skeptical as to the value of 

 his theories. 



An eminent scientist at one time spoke of him as "the Kepler of this 

 century," and there was a certain resemblance, in the tentative methods 

 pursued by him, to those by which his great prototype discovered the 

 astronomical laws upon which his fame is based. 



Prof. Kirkwood writes : " The just value of his contributions to science 

 caiinot at once be determined. It must be said, however, that his hypo- 

 thetical conclusions were so often in close agreement with well-known 

 facts, as to leave the impression that his theories must have a foundation 

 in truth." 



Prof. Herschell, referring to his paper on "The Results of Wave Inter- 

 ference," bears this testimony : "From a direction of research probably as 

 distant and distinct as pcssible from the late Prof. Chase's, at least in its 

 origin, I have reached results which the contents in this case, of Prof. 

 Chase's papers, confirm and corroborate so amazingly, that all question 

 of the real validity of views, however incongruous they may perhaps 

 be to each other in particulars, by which identical results of such surprising 

 characters have been arrived at by us both, in perfect independence, is 

 banished completely and forever from my mind. Prof. Chase's writings 

 and discoveries will constantly gain in note and consequence by wider and 

 longer consideration and perusal ; and they will surely never cease to have 

 leading uses for consultation and for purposes of instructive study, among 

 those who aim and strive to unmask more laws of energy's unitary opera- 

 lions, if possible as prominent and predominating as those which his 

 discoveries have disclosed." 



An American philosopher, who, while somewhat uncertain how to esti- 

 mate him, says he is hopeful that the future will reveal the value of Prof. 

 Chase's labors, speaks thus of his later work : " It may prove prophetic 

 of developments that will take us a long step below our present philos- 

 ophy of things — or it may not. Time will show. If the new develop- 

 ments do come, my feeling is, that they will help to bring the heavens and 

 the earth nearer together, by showing that beneath the seemingly ulti- 

 mate facts of matter, gravitation, conservation of work, things that may 

 seem to pertain to no other life cf ours than this— tliat beneath these, 

 and nearer to the ultimate reality, there lies an order of things that may 

 well serve as the physical basis of this and the next life alike." 

 Prof. Chase, although, as we have already said, very modest in his esti- 



