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stone, an instance of the “ accelerating forces ” which Mr. Laming says are 
“ entirely unknown to nature ” ! I cannot understand how he can have 
brought himself to write such words. As I have already said, there is room 
for considerable criticism, and in some parts of the paper I cannot find the 
beginning, middle, or end of the author’s meaning. In one passage he 
says : — 
“ The forces of gravitation, electricity, and caloric, or heat, are each so 
common that we may consider them to be acting in concert in insensible 
spaces intervening between the atoms in masses of matter.” 
In another passage he speaks of the “ effect of caloric or heat being the same 
as gravitation in causing attraction ” ; and in a further passage he says : — 
“ In conducting this argument, no allusion has been made to repulsion , for 
the simple reason that no such force is required.” 
Required by what ? Again I say I cannot understand his drift. He 
adds, “ What we call repulsion is not a force, but a fact due to attraction ” ; 
whereas I have always understood that repulsion is the reverse of attraction. 
The spirit of the last two pages of the paper I quite understand, and I think 
I see what the author is aiming at ; but I should be sorry to commit myself 
even to the approval of that part, owing to the mistiness of the language, and 
to the use of terms in a different sense to what we have all been accustomed 
to. It would be invidious, however, to go through the paper any further ; 
and I may say that I think its merit chiefly consists in the fact that it has 
given us an opportunity of discussing such questions as whether space has 
properly an existence, or is only a mere negation, and as to whether the new 
dogma of the conservation of force is true. 
Mr. Warington. — W ith regard to the author’s theory as to the origin 
of matter, let us carry it out to its legitimate extent, and see in what it 
involves us. In metaphysics it is especially difficult, and, indeed, almost 
impossible, except for those who are deeply versed in such studies, to see at 
once what a proposition involves unless it is traced out to its full extent. 
Mr. Laming tells us that all matter may have originated from the conception 
of something which should appear to be material in the mind of the Creator ; 
that it has no existence out of the mind of the Creator at any time ; that it 
is not material ; that there has been a conception which has formed the 
pattern or type upon which what we regard as the material entity has been 
afterwards constructed ; but that the original conception remains the only 
entity ever afterwards ; and that that is the conception which exists only in 
the mind of the Creator. That is Mr. Laming’s theory of the origin of matter. 
Then, I would ask, how do we become conscious of the existence of matter ? 
It is not a thing which has any actual existence by itself, — it is not a thing 
which exists in my individual mind, — for it exists only as a conception 
in the mind of God. How, then, do I know that it exists ? I can perceive 
matter — I cannot help perceiving it, for it is a part of my nature that I 
