_Character of this Power._--This term has been employed in various senses by different writers. It does not denote properly a distinct faculty of the mind. I conceive of a thing when I make it a distinct object of thought, when I apprehend it, when I construe it to myself as a possible thing, and as being thus and thus. This form of mental activity enters more or less into all our mental operations; it is involved in perception, memory, imagination, abstraction, judgment, reasoning, etc. For this reason it is not to be ranked as one of, and correlate with, these several specific faculties. Like the power of thought, and hardly even more limited than that, it underlies all the special faculties, and is essential to them all. Such at least is the ordinary acceptation of the term; and when we employ it to denote some specific form of mental activity, we employ it in a sense aside from its usual and established meaning. _Objects of Conception._--I conceive of an absent object of sight, as, _e. g._, the appearance of an absent friend, or of a foreign city, of the march of an army, or the eruption of a volcano. I conceive also of a mathematical truth, or a problem in astronomy. My conceptions are not limited to former perceptions or sensations, nor even to objects of sensible perception. They are not limited to material and sensible objects. They embrace the past and the future, the actual and the ideal, the sensible and the super-sensible. _Conceptions neither true nor false._--Our conceptions are neither true nor false, in themselves considered; they become so only when attended with some exercise of judgment or of belief. We conceive of a mountain of gold or of glass, and this simple conception has nothing to do with truth or error. When we conceive of it, however, as actually existing, and in this or that place, or when we simply judge that such a mountain is somewhere to be found, then such judgment or belief is either true or false; but it is no longer simple conception. _Not always Possibilities; nor possible Things always conceivable._--Our conceptions are not always possibilities. We can conceive of some things not within the limits of possibility. On the other hand, not every thing possible even is conceivable. Existence without beginning or end is possible, but it is not in the power of the human mind, strictly speaking, to conceive of such a thing. I know that Deity thus exists. I understand what is meant by such a proposition, and I believe it. But I cannot construe it to myself as a definite intellection, an apprehension, as I can conceive of the existence of a city or a continent, or of the truth of a mathematical proposition.