65 



another where labour shall have its reward and sorrow shall 

 be unknown. It opens before us a sphere where the perfect 

 knowledge after which we here vainly toil, and the perfect 

 happiness after which we as vainly strive, shall be fully and 

 for ever realised. 



The Chairman (Mr. H. Cadman Jones). — I am sure I may return the 

 hearty thanks of this meeting to Dr. Porter for his exceedingly able paper. 

 Before calling on those present to discuss it, I would venture to call attention 

 to the question whether it can fairly be said that the hypothesis of the 

 existence of atoms " has no clear logical connexion with any observed fact." 

 If the connexion between the observed law of chemical combination in 

 definite proportions and the hypothesis of the existence of atoms be not 

 strictly logical, at all events that hypothesis furnishes, as I believe, the only 

 explanation of the law that has ever been suggested. It is therefore a 

 hypothesis which has strong claims to our attention. I cannot agree in 

 the idea that an atom is unthinkable. Dr. Porter says : — " Now, to con- 

 ceive of a piece of matter, having necessarily, because it is matter, length 

 and breadth, and yet being indivisible, is, as I think, an absurdity." For 

 my part, I cannot see that it is so. You cannot conceive of matter having 

 length and breadth, and yet of its being inconceivable and theoretically 

 impossible that it should be divided, but it is perfectly possible to conceive 

 an atom which has length, and breadth, and depth, and which is yet so 

 physically constituted that it cannot be divided ; and this is all that is 

 necessary for the atomic theory. Not that an atom is something which 

 cannot theoretically be divided, and must be conceived incapable of sub- 

 division ; but something which cannot by any existing causes in nature be 

 divided. I have now to invite remarks on the subject of the paper from any 

 of those present. 



The Bishop of Ballarat. — We are greatly indebted to Dr. Porter for 

 the luminous style of his paper, and for the well-selected quotations, by 

 means of which he has put the views of eminent men which he combats 

 before us in their own words. On page 44, near the bottom, the persistence 

 of the "fit" is noticed as part of the theory of the universe expounded form 

 Lucretius by Tyndall. It always seems to me that it postulates a God to 

 provide that the " fit " should be the " good." The struggle for existence 

 which, as I think Kingsley remarks, of itself would yield the survival of the 

 biggest, the most brutal or most unscrupulous, issues on the large scale in 

 the triumph of that which corresponds to our moral idea of the best. Why 

 should " blind combinations " do that ? Dr. Porter sums up section ii. 

 by quoting, as the Bible philosophy of life, in contradistinction to 

 theories which make it a property of protoplasm, the passage describing 

 God's bestowal of " life " on man. Was not this a different bestowal from 

 that on the " moving creature that hath life"? And does Scripture any- 

 where record the bestowal of " life " on vegetables i If, therefore, proto- 

 plasm could even be shown to have life as a property in vegetation, 

 VOL. XVIII. p 



