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Victoria Institute, to have that privilege. (Laughter.) I believe there is 
a certain amount of truth at the bottom of Platonism, as there must be at 
the bottom of every system that has ever taken a great hold upon the human 
mind and understanding. I have no doubt, then, that there is some truth 
at the bottom of the mystical dogma of eternal ideas as held by the Platonists, 
and held and taught by a certain school of mystics in the present day. The 
truth may be, and Professor Kirk seems to think it is, that species are 
original realities, or divine ideas, if I may so speak. That seems to be 
Professor Kirk’s belief. He says that varieties have come to be called 
species, but that if we could get to a really true absolute species itself, we 
should find that that species is pure and true and unchangeable,— a created 
thing, — in some way or other a distinct emanation from the Divine mind and 
will. Genera are mere abstractions, the general names of classes, the mere 
creatures of our own thinking ; varieties are instances of species, and may 
change, — they are the mutable living forms which embody the original 
Divine idea ; species are the original ideas themselves. I do not know that 
that is proved, but I am glad to find there is a philosopher and meta- 
physician who thinks so ; that he, having examined for himself, holds to the 
doctrine and believes it to be a theory in accordance with both science and 
Scripture. But so far as species are concerned, I apprehend that whatever 
may be our faith as to their being ideas and types in the Divine mind, to 
make them causative would be to reproduce the very error of Darwin in 
another form, the very error which we combat, — namely, that of making 
laws to be what laws are not, and what they never can be, — causes. To say 
that the “ laws ” of Darwin and modern philosophers, or the ideas of Plato, 
or of the Neo-Platonists, or of the modern Platonic school — to say that these 
laws or ideas are real causes, would be to put God out of the way in the one 
case just as much as in the other. We must think either of ideas in the 
Divine mind which we can only imperfectly apprehend ; or of species and 
varieties, as conceived by ourselves. As we define them they are nothing in 
the world but our own ideas. For my part, I do not believe that form has 
any being apart from some conceiving mind. There is a vast amount of truth 
in this paper of Professor Kirk’s, which we should do well to consider ; and 
we ought to feel exceedingly obliged to Professor Kirk for the manner in 
which he has brought forward his ideas. I confess I have myself no sort 
of difficulty or delicacy about recognizing Professor Kirk’s view when he 
speaks of life as some kind of form or law of movement. I believe that is 
the case. As far as inferior life is concerned, it is some law producing 
movement, as in the plant for instance. And the more philosophers try to 
look at the whole mystery of the universe and penetrate all its phenomena, 
the more they are disposed to come back to the feeling that force in some 
form is ultimately will ; and I do not see why we should quarrel with that 
conclusion at all, so long as we hold that there is one God over all, and that 
His will is working all things. 
Rev. J . B. Owen. — I have just one word to offer condemnatory of the bad 
