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“ having existed from eternity” ? Simply, I suppose, that past duration is to 
the mind of the one attempting to limit it entirely beyond any power of 
limitation which in imagination he can apply to it. It simply means illimit- 
able past duration. Then what has the author done? He has shown you 
the past, a period which to him is an inimitably vast period of change of 
phenomena, and he says : “Because there has been this, therefore there has 
not been an illimitable period of existence.” Well, that may be true, and 
perhaps if I had better opportunities of accustoming myself to the mode 
of reasoning pursued by Mr. Pattison I might better grasp it ; but it seems 
to me that the conclusions are exactly the opposite of the evidence, so far as 
I can follow the matter, and admitting the whole of the evidence to be, m 
point of fact, thoroughly reliable evidence. But let us look at this a little 
further. One passage in the quotation is : 
“ The universe will have an end, and must have had a beginning. 
Is there any justification of such a position in the paper itself ? There may be 
evidence that the condition of existence may cease to exist as such, but surely 
that does not touch the great question at all. I do not know whether I 
shall be in order in commenting on what has fallen from Mr. Beddie, but it 
I am, I should like to say a few words, because I do not understand what is 
meant by “ dead inanimate matter.” The phrase is to me one which entirely 
begs and assumes the whole question against one standing, fortunately or 
unfortunately, in the same position as myself, and I should deny the ngnt of 
any one to take any conditions of existence and to coolly fasten on them a 
deficiency for the purpose of manufacturing some cause for supplying the 
deficiency which only actually exists in the definition you give to it. We are 
told of force and its action in connection with that matter which is spoken o as 
“ dead and inanimate,” and of force evolved out of divine action, because we 
are told of that divine action not in nature, but as contradistinguished from 
the force acting in nature ; so that the writer of the paper assumes, and Mr. 
Reddie must be taken to assume, not a dead inanimate state of thmgs, but a ^ 
sorts of capabilities for action so far as they are involved in that word force 
—all sorts of capabilities for action as the necessary result of a certain condi- 
tion of existence. Now I know how extremely difficult it is, when one man is 
in the habit of thinking in a particular direction, and he meets other people in 
the habit of thinking in an exactly opposite direction, to make one’s thoug ts 
clear. The great difficulty in a discussion of this kind is that we stand upon 
opposite sides of the stream, and instead of throwing at one another we throw 
away from one another, because the words we use do not convey the same 
meaning to one another’s minds. The difficulty occurs to me, why cannot 
dead inanimate matter move ? You say it must have a mover. Is it because 
the movement is unlike anything which you can conjecture of dead inanimate 
matter that you have to imagine a mover for it ? If so, you are driven into 
a series of dilemmas by your argument. If you assume that the inanimate 
cannot move because like cannot result in unlike, then you are p ace 
this dilemma, that the governing force, or Deity— call it what you wi — 
