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addition, tliat these atoms are impressed and controlled by fate or necessity. 
It is a curious thing to find the early theories of the old Greek philosophers still 
cropping up here. Then, in another part, it seems to me that the author 
represents that motivity, as a force, is capable of exhaustion. Of course, any 
physical force is capable of being exhausted in its effects ; but he appears to 
me to contend that moral force also is capable of exhaustion. My moral force, 
or the motive which produces, continues as strong as ever after it has been 
exercised — I mean, the effort I produce in realizing a result in motivity does 
not weaken the power or the moral force which I call into action. 
Mr. Reddie. — I am sorry that the author of the paper is absent to-night ; 
but I expected that from the beginning, as he is a great invalid and quite 
unable to move from one room to another unless he is carried. I also regret 
the absence of our usual chairman, from whom I expected we should have 
had some valuable and interesting remarks with reference to the author’s 
treatment of the theory of the conservation of force or energy. The paper 
has already been criticised somewhat severely ; and I am bound to admit 
that it is open to a very great amount of criticism. And first I think the 
title is open to objection. Mr. Laming has entitled his paper, “ On the 
Immediate Derivation of Physical Science from the First Great Cause.” This 
language is evidently erroneous ; — the author means the derivation of things 
of which science takes cognizance, and not of our knowledge of them. But 
there is, in fact, a great looseness in the language throughout ; and there is 
a very great difficulty in dealing with the paper, arising from the author’s use 
of words in a different sense from that in which they are usually employed. 
With regard to that part of the paper in which Mr. Laming treats of space, 
there can be no doubt that we have got into a certain conventional mode of 
speaking of space as if it were an entity — not merely in the sense used by 
Aristotle when he says that a man who predicates that a thing is nothing, 
therefore predicates for it a kind of existence as nothing ; but we certainly 
do all habitually speak of space in the way that the author of the paper does, 
when he says that “ God is described as ever filling all space.” I have no 
doubt we have all met with similar language in books that would pass 
current both amongst philosophers and theologians ; but it appears to me to 
be erroneous. I agree with Mr. Row that, in ordinary parlance, we may, 
with a sort of accuracy, say that God fills all space, meaning thereby that 
there is no place where He is not ; but then it is equally true that He is ever 
present at all places altogether, and in all His uncreated perfections. We 
cannot therefore predicate material extension of God without appearing to 
predicate parts as well. But'- there is a theological declaration expressly 
forbidding that. The very first of the Thirty-nine Articles declares that we 
are not to predicate body or parts of the Deity. Yet people do speak as if 
space were an entity : even Mr. Row, for example, talked of things “ existing 
in space” 
Mr. Row. — But I do not maintain that space has an absolute existence. 
Mr. Reddie. — The words “in space” are merely superfluous. But I think 
the author’s meaning is distinct enough on this point. He says : — 
