220 



Hon. Secretary. (Cheers.) I regret, however, to say that we have lost two 

 members, through death, during the past week ; namely, Lord Harris and Sir 

 Donald McLeod. 



The folio v?ing paper was then read by the Author : — 



FORCE ANT) ENERGY. By Chaeles Brooke, M.A., 

 F.E.S., V.P.Y.L, clc. 



THE principle of the Conservation of Energy having been by 

 some writers misapplied to the promotion of views that 

 lead directly to ^laterialism, Pantheism, or Atheism, others 

 who rightly hold it to be one of their first and highest duties 

 to oppose such views and to counteract their tendency, 

 appear to have held it necessary to impugn the principle 

 altogether, instead of assigning a limit to the scope of its 

 legitimate application. Two essays are here specially referred 

 to: one by the Rev. J. ]\Ioore, entitled ^' The Heresies of 

 Science,^'' published in the London Quarterly Review for July, 

 1871, in which the theories discussed are those of '^Natural 

 Selection*^ and " The Conservation of Energy •'^ ; the other by 

 the Rev. J. ZxI'Cann, D.D., entitled " Force and its Manifesta- 

 tions,^' and recently read before this society. 



2. Dr. M'Cann states (§ 1) that the conservation of energy, 

 if established, would in Biology lead to Evolution, in Theology 

 to Pantheism, in Philosophy to Materialism, and in Morals to 

 Necessitarianism : this cannot be conceded as a necessary 

 sequence, for if it be freely admitted, as the writer most heartily 

 does, that all physical laws must ever be held to be subservient 

 to the far higher law of an Almighty Will, he cannot be 

 supposed, in upholding the truth of tliis principle, to advocate 

 those evil tendencies, which it is admitted must ensue, if the 

 existence of that higher law be either directly or by implication 

 denied. 



3. On the doctrine of " Evolutiou by Natural Selection,'^ 

 impugned by Mr. Moore, it would be foreign to the subject of 

 this paper to enter at any length. That the existing order of 

 nature might have so arisen, had it been in accordance with the 

 will of the Creator, cannot be denied; but that any such 

 supposed course of events has actually happened is quite 

 another question. To the mind of the writer this doctrine 

 presents such grave difficulties that he is unable to accept its 

 probability, and is generally in accord with what the author of 



Heresies ''^ has written on the subject. It will only further 

 be remarked that a belief in the progressive development of 



