562 INTELLECTUAL SYMBOLISM. 
one contradictory is thus found inconceivable; we cannot conceive space as positively 
limited. 
406. ‘‘On the other hand, we are equally powerless to realize in thought the possibility 
of the opposite contradictory; we cannot conceive space as infinite, as without limits. 
You may launch out in thought beyond the solar walk, you may transcend in fancy even 
the universe of matter, and rise from sphere to sphere in the region of empty space, until 
imagination sinks exhausted ;—with all this, what have you done? You have never gone 
beyond the finite, you have attained at best only to the indefinite, and the indefinite, 
however expanded, is still always the finite. . . . Now then, both contradictories are 
equally inconceivable, and could we limit our attention to one alone, we should deem it at 
once impossible and absurd, and suppose its unknown opposite as necessarily true. But 
as we not only can, but are constrained to consider both, we find that both are equally in- 
comprehensible ; and yet, though unable to view either as possible, we are forced by a 
higher law to admit that one, but one only, is necessary. .. . 
407. “If we attempt to comprehend time, either in whole or in part, we find that thought 
is hedged in between two incomprehensibles. . . We are altogether unable to conceive time 
as commencing; we can easily represent to ourselves time under any relative limitation of 
commencement and termination, but we are conscious to ourselves of nothing more clearly, 
than that it would be equally possible to think without thought, as to construe to the 
mind an absolute commencement, or an absolute termination of time, that is, a beginning 
and an end, beyond which time is conceived as non-existent. . . We cannot conceive the 
infinite regress of time; for such a notion could only be realized by the infinite addition 
in thought of finite times, and such an addition would itself require an eternity for its ac- 
complishment. . . The negation of a commencement of time involves, likewise, the affir- 
mation, that an infinite time has, at every moment, already run; that is, it implies the 
contradiction, that an infinite has been completed. For the same reasons, we are unable 
to conceive an infinite progress of time ; while the infinite regress and the infinite progress 
taken together, involve the triple contradiction of an infinite concluded, of an infinite 
commencing, and of two infinites, not exclusive of each other.”* 
408. The fundamental difficulty in the foregoing arguments, appears to arise from the 
ambiguity of the terms conceive and infinite. If by conception is meant a complete and 
adequate realization in thought, of infinite space and time, they are undoubtedly incon- 
ceivable. But if we use the word only to denote such a degree of knowledge as will 
enable us positively to assert that space has no bounds, and that eternity has neither be- 
ginning nor end, the conception is certainly possible. The “triple contradiction of an 
* Hamilton: Metaphysics, pp. 527-9. 
