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selection will pick out with unerring skill each improvement. Let this pro- 
cess go on for millions on millions of years ; and during each year on millions 
of individuals of many kinds ; and may we not believe that a living optical 
instrument might thus be formed as superior to one of glass as the works of 
the Creator to those of man ?” 
That is a pretty paragraph, but it proves nothing. And now, before sitting 
down, let me express my great gratitude to that clear-headed, excellent man, 
Professor Kirk. The only thing I have to regret, without intending to be in 
the slightest degree disrespectful to our hon. secretary who read it so well, is 
that the Professor was not here to read it himself to us. 
Mr. Reddie. — It is now so late, that although so much time has been 
wasted on verbal criticism both of Mr. Darwin’s and of Professor Kirk’s mere 
modes of expression, and so little attention has been paid to the argument 
and thesis of the paper before us, I find I must leave our chairman to do 
justice to the author, and must confine myself to noticing one or two points 
where I do not altogether go with Professor Kirk. It is not an adequate 
definition of life to call it merely a “ movement ” or “ force.” I should like 
Dr. Rigg to explain what is the distinction between life and the motion of 
life, just as we can distinguish between the law or force of gravitation, and 
the motion of a falling body. We surely have a clear conception of some- 
thing distinctive between every such law or force and its effect 
Rev. Dr. Rigg. — I should be sorry to say that it is a sufficient definition, 
and Professor Kirk does not say so. All that he meant to say is, that in 
general, life is a form of movement or force ; but he does not undertake to 
define the special form in regard to each particular species of living thing. 
Mr. Reddie. — But I say that the force of gravitation is a clear conception 
to my mind, apart from the motion it may produce, whenever I feel the 
pressure of a heavy body. When you take a stone in your hand, you feel 
the force of gravitation without any motion at all. But I cannot understand 
any man who thinks clearly and argues philosophically trying to upset this 
language, which is common to the Principia of Newton and to the reasonings 
of Galileo. Even Dr. Rigg, when he adopted the same notion as Professor 
Kirk with regard to life, showed that he could not go on talking intelligibly 
while he retained that imaginary and faulty definition of life as being merely 
movement ; for he spoke, not of life being a movement, but of the law of life 
producing movement. He used the word “ law,” and I do not see how he 
can fail to recognize the weight of the argument that forces do exist distinct 
from the movement they may produce. In these gemmules, when examined 
under the microscope, the motion is something in the material thing moved ; 
but the cause of the motion, or what we call life, is something besides, that 
cannot come under the microscope. We had a similar view, which I ventured 
to oppose, advanced by Professor Kirk the session before last. But I agree 
cordially with the general scope of his paper ; and I am only sorry that, if 
there are any opponents to it, they do not meet his arguments now. The 
idea of these gemmules is, I fancy, analogous to the atomic theory to be found 
