( 6=) 
Oxford, in June 1873, while I did not matriculate until October 
of the same year, so that, as undergraduates, we never saw 
each other. 
Before speaking of the losses which have fallen so heavily 
upon our community during 1903,—the brother Fellows who 
have gone from our midst, I feel bound to allude to the 
grief which we share with the whole intellectual world at 
the passing away, towards the close of the old year, of 
the great thinker to whom we owe far more than we can 
realise. I well remember the sudden access of light received 
when, between the age of seventeen and eighteen, Herbert 
Spencer’s works were first placed in my hands. The whole of 
science seemed illuminated, the whole outlook broadened. It 
was the most sudden and by far the greatest intellectual 
awakening I have ever experienced. And, as we know well, 
it has been the same with thousands. After Shakespeare, no 
man has done more to bring together the English* of the 
Old World and the New. And not only among ourselves, 
but everywhere in the civilised world the writings of Herbert 
Spencer have stirred enthusiasm and compelled admiration, 
They have left strong, indelible, beneficent after-effects even 
in those who are unable to believe in the enduring stability 
of the Synthetic Philosophy—a fabric as fair and stately as 
any created by the mind of man. 
Since the above paragraph was written Mr. Herbert 
Spencer’s will has been made known in the Times for January 
14th. I am sure that every Fellow of our Society keenly 
appreciates the expression of confidence which is implied in 
the gift which will hereafter be offered to us by the Trustees 
of the will 
to be so carried out as to secure the greatest possible advantage 
a gift which we shall regard as a solemn trust, 
to the science we serve. 
Freverick Bares, F.E.S., joined the Society as a ‘‘sub- 
seriber” in 1867. Subsequently withdrawing, he again 
entered the Society as a Fellow in 1897. He was born at 
Leicester in 1829, and his death occurred at Chiswick on the 
6th of October, in his 74th year. Like his distinguished 
* For the justification of this use of the word see Sir Michael Foster's 
Presidential Address to Section D of the British Association at Toronto 
(Report for 1897), 
