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mainly with the more vital questions, instead of wasting its strength in 
endless discussions on a variety of subordinate matters. 
Dr. Ieons. — I wish to make one remark on a subject which seems to me 
worthy the attention of those whom I had the pleasure of addressing a few 
minutes ago. I feared that I had diverted your minds, in some degree, from 
the great object of this essay, but what has since been said by Prebendary 
Bow encourages me to hope that he may be induced to read this paper care- 
fully over again, because I think that the point he refers to (in §§ 10 and 11) is 
one which really ought to be regarded as extremely valuable. (Hear, hear.) The 
author has warned us, apparently, that there is a lower sphere of moral or 
social duty which must be determined by law. What he stated , for example, 
in his system of ethics, shows the way in which duty may be determined by 
examining the various relations of men to one another ; and the author goes 
on afterwards, on the very next page, with the third of Fichte’s divisions, to 
show that the higher morality really pertains to a higher sphere altogether. 
I think that when sections 9 to 12 are carefully read once more by my 
acute friend, he will entirely agree with me that there is no more 
valuable passage in the whole of the essay than that in which it is 
pointed out that social law is not merely determined by ourselves, but also 
by the Divine Will. Then I will hope that the author will find time to say 
a few words on motion. In section 19 he speaks of motion as generating 
motion. How it is that motion generates motion it is not very easy to 
say. There are some wonderful remarks on the subject in Bishop Berkeley’s 
essay, Be Motu , in which he quotes Torricelli. I should like to know 
how force can communicate motion, so that it becomes a new force at the 
next stage of motion. Does the motion create motion, or is a second force 
created to move the second object — or the third ? Suppose a force, at the 
outset, to touch the first object, does that touch, or the result of that touch, 
create a force in respect of the second object, and so on to the third and 
fourth along the whole line of objects ? Where is force generated ? It 
seems to me most difficult to understand how it can be as here put ; because, 
either we must place God behind every molecule to direct it, or else, at all 
events, some real force that begins the movement. I hope I am making 
myself intelligible as to this difficulty of force creating force. 
Bishop Cotterill. — A metaphysical difficulty. 
Dr. Irons. —Perhaps a mathematical one ; but there is a difficulty to me 
in seeing how force generates force. Of course, we all understand that there 
must be a cause for everything. Without a cause, could force impress itself 
on an object ? Does a force so impressed become a motion-making power ? 
Does it communicate its own nature to a third and fourth object, and so, all 
along the whole line, generating continuous action or motion ? I myself 
object to any proposition that brings God, as a force, immediately behind 
every molecule to give it its direction : and yet I do not quite see how the 
author can avoid this conclusion, if he will allow me to put it in such 
a way. 
