"Personality, with all its limitations, though far from exhibiting the absolute nature of God as He is, is yet truer, grander, more elevating, more religious, than those barren, vague, meaningless abstractions in which men babble about nothing under the name of the Infinite and Personal conscious existence, limited though it be, is yet the noblest of all existence of which man can dream.... It is by consciousness alone that we know that God exists, or that we are able to offer Him any service. It is only by conceiving Him as a Conscious Being, that we can stand in any religious relation to Him at all; that we can form such a representation of Him as is demanded by our spiritual wants, insufficient though it be to satisfy our intellectual curiosity."--_Limits of Religious Thought_, p. 104. The conclusions of these writers upon this whole topic are as follows:-- "The mind is not represented as conceiving two propositions subversive of each other as equally possible; _but only as unable to understand_ as possible two extremes; one of which, however, on the ground of their mutual repugnance, it is compelled to recognize as true.... And by a wonderful revelation we are thus, in the very consciousness of our inability to conceive aught above the relative and finite, inspired with a belief in the existence of something unconditioned beyond the sphere of all comprehensive reality."--_Sir William Hamilton's Essays_, p. 22. "To sum up briefly this portion of my argument. The conception of the Absolute and Infinity, from whatever side we view it, appears encompassed with contradictions. There is a contradiction in supposing such an object to exist, whether alone or in conjunction with others; and there is a contradiction in supposing it not to exist. There is a contradiction in conceiving it as one; and there is a contradiction in conceiving it as many. There is a contradiction in conceiving it as personal; and there is a contradiction in conceiving it as impersonal. It cannot, without contradiction, be represented as active; nor, without equal contradiction, be represented as inactive. It cannot be conceived as the sum of all existence; nor yet can it be conceived as a part only of that sum."--_Limits of Religious Thought_, pp. 84, 85. We have quoted thus largely, preferring that the Limitists should speak for themselves. Their doctrine, as taught, not simply in these passages, but throughout their writings, may be briefly summed up as follows.