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whether I rightly apprehend him as stating that activity in man, and in all 
spiritual beings, is from above ? 
Mr. Gorman. — Yes. No created being has life in itself. The Deity 
alone has life in Himself. Man, for example, is merely an organized 
receptacle of life. 
Mr. Graham. — If the assertion be that the power of activity comes 
from above, I accept the statement ; but if it be meant that the activity 
itself comes from above, then all human actions must be good ones. 
Mr. Gorman. — May I explain ? When the divine influx descends 
into our minds, it flows into an organ or receptacle of life, the soul, which is 
by nature in a state of evil. The inflowing life becomes modified, according 
to the nature and character of the recipient. The evil is not in the inflowing 
life, but in the already perverted will and understanding which receive it. 
Thus, it is the same life that flows into man and angel ; but it is modified 
according to the form and state of the recipient. In like manner, in the 
natural world, the heat and light of one and the same sun flow into a 
grain of wheat and into the seed of the deadly nightshade, and, owing to the 
difference of the recipient form, there results, in the one case what con- 
tributes to sustain life ; in the other, a narcotic poison. 
The Chairman. — We are going a little too far from the subject of the 
paper. 
Mr. Graham.— I think we are nearly agreed. Having made these 
observations, I deem it right to say that I am exceedingly thankful to the 
author of this paper for the way in which he has brought the subject before 
us. I regard it as a very able paper ; but could wish the author had 
entered more into the moral aspect of the question, because I think that that 
is the most important aspect in which we can view it, and I think also that 
the generality of reflecting people, and more especially those who believe 
that the subjects of morality and righteousness are the highest we can keep 
before our minds, would be greatly . interested to find the question treated 
from this point of view. 
Mr. Phipps. — Although a stranger, I may perhaps be permitted to observe 
that to me one of the most interesting parts of the paper we have heard is 
that which speaks of the permanency and non-permanency of motion. It 
is an old argument that motion of heavy matter once established must needs 
go on for ever, because although it may communicate motion to something 
else, and that something else may do the same thing to another something, 
the motion that is communicated must go on for ever. I should like to know 
whether the author of the paper conceives that the objection to the per- 
manency of motion, when once established, is the difficulty of saying what 
infinite space is filled with. I gathered that the difficulty arose from the 
ignorance in which we are upon this subject, some saying that space is filled 
with a fine ether, while others conceive ii to be a. vacuum. 
The Chairman. — The real difficulty of dealing with this paper is that it 
involves important principles of Physical and Metaphysical Science, of a high 
