160 Obituary Notices of Felloivs deceased. 



in 1899 was awarded a Royal Medal. He married, in 1885, 

 Harriette M., second daughter of the late Rev. J. H. Jellett, D.D., 

 Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, to whom the next previous 

 award to an Irish man of Science of a Koyal *Medal had been made. 

 One who had unrivalled opportunities of . appreciating these two men 

 remarks on " the great likeness in the two characters : the great 

 simplicity, the directness of purpose, the utter absence of preaching 

 but the living of the life that is best ; their great tenderness and 

 love of children." 



The " idealistic " turn of his mind in dealing with ultimate 

 questions came out constantly in his conversation on such topics, 

 and may be illustrated by a quotation from the end of his Helmholtz 

 Lecture. After noting that all forms of external stimulus, into 

 whatever terms we translate them sound, colour, and the rest, nay, 

 even space, time, and substance too, perhaps resolve themselves into 

 motion, he goes on td ask : " And what is the inner aspect of 

 motion 1 In the only place where we can hope to answer this 

 question, in our brains, thought [turns out to be] the internal aspect 

 of motion. Is it not reasonable to hold, with the great and good 



Bishop Berkeley, that thought underlies all motion " "For the 



highest life we require the highest ideal of the Universe to work 

 in. Can any higher exist than that, as language is a motion 

 expressing to others our thoughts, so Nature is a language expressing 

 thoughts, if we learn but to read them." 



He insisted on the ether being not a simple fluid, with the atoms 

 as vortex rings, but a medium itself full of motion, a vortex 

 " sponge " or assemblage of vortex filaments ; and by help of such a 

 medium he hoped ultimately to be able to explain not only light and 

 electricity but the structure and properties of matter, all its 

 physical and chemical agencies, and the material universe generally. 

 But always he was well aware that such would be no ultimate 

 explanation, that what we are really and primarily aware of is mind 

 and mental processes, that thought and feeling are primary facts of 

 consciousness, while all else is an inference and is probably 

 essentially unlike what it appears to our senses : so that all this 

 cosmic whirl and material activity, and probably life itself, would 

 resolve itself, when properly comprehended, into the activity of an 

 all-pervading and beneficent Mind. 



0. J. L. 



