HELMHOLTZ IN BERLIN 



recognise the development of the individual, both as 

 regards mental capacity and the victory of the soul 

 over the passions and opposing powers of nature. 

 Endowed with the rarest gifts of mind and character, 

 he has in his short life reaped a harvest in a field in 

 which many of the most talented of his scientific 

 brethren had laboured in vain. In classical times his 

 death would have been regarded as a sacrifice to the 

 envy of the gods. Nature and fate co-operated in his 

 development. In him we found all the qualities 

 required for the solution of the hardest problems in 

 science. . . . Heinrich Hertz appeared to be pre- 

 destined to disclose new vistas into the unpenetrated 

 depths of nature ; but all these hopes were crushed by 

 the insidious disease which slowly and unceasingly 

 crept on until it destroyed the life we esteemed so 

 valuable. I myself deeply felt the loss, as I have 

 always looked on Hertz as the one of all my students 

 who had entered into the innermost circle of my 

 scientific thoughts, and the one in whose ultimate 

 development and success I dared to place my surest 

 hopes.' In a few months the great master followed 

 his pupil to the grave. 



Among the last papers written by Helmholtz was 

 one on Clerk Maxwell's theory of the movements in 

 the free ether, in which he discussed profound ques- 

 tions as to whether it were free to move, to what 

 extent and how it was associated with gross matter, 

 and he shows that its incompressibility being assumed, 

 219 



