He was chairman of the Tyneside Tramways and Tramroads Company and a member of the senate of Durham University.

[5] [6] His eldest son, Charles Hesterman Merz (1874-1940), was a successful electrical engineer who pioneered the use of high-voltage three-phase AC power distribution in the United Kingdom.

It is the object of these volumes to fix, if possible, this possession; to rescue from oblivion that which appears to me our secret property; in the last and dying hour of a remarkable age to throw the light upon the fading outlines of its mental life; to try to trace them, and with the aid of all possible information, gained from the written testimonies or the records of others, to work them into a coherent picture, which may give to those who follow some idea of the peculiar manner in which our age looked upon the world and life, how it intellectualised and spiritualised them.

[10][11]It was Merz's objective to write this history of thought from the point of view of one who shared in the progress and watched many of the changes and movements, and to set out the inner life of his contemporaries and the secret springs of their judgements and opinions.

It consists of 4000 volumes, including works on philosophy, European history and German Literature.