The same may be said of the ideas of the infinite and the absolute. They are not properly within the limits of thought, of apprehension, to the human mind. Thought in its very nature imposes a limitation on the object which is thought of--fathoms it--passes around it with its measuring line--apprehends it: only so far as this is done is the thing actually thought; only so far as it can be done is the thing really thinkable. But the infinite, the unconditioned, the absolute, in their very nature unlimited, cannot be shut up thus within the narrow lines of human thought. They are inconceivable. They are not, however, contradictory to thought. They may be true; they are true and real, though we cannot properly conceive them. _The Inconceivable becomes Impossible, when._--Not every thing then which is inconceivable is impossible, nor, on the other hand, is every thing which is impossible inconceivable. The inconceivable is impossible, at least it can be known to be so, only when it is either self-contradictory--as that a thing should be and not be at the same time--that a part is equal to the whole, etc.; or when it is contradictory of the laws of thought, as that two straight lines should enclose a space--that an event may occur without a cause--that space is not necessary to the existence of matter, or time to the succession of events. These things are unthinkable but they are more than that, contradictory of the established laws of thought; and they are impossible, because thus contradictory, and not merely because inconceivable. It is hardly true, as is sometimes affirmed, and as Dr. Wayland has stated, that our conceptions are the limits of possibility. _Mr. Stewart's use of the term Conception._--Mr. Stewart has employed the term Conception in a somewhat peculiar manner, and has assigned it a definite place among the faculties of the mind. He uses it to denote "that power of the mind which enables it to form a notion of an absent object of perception, or of a sensation which we have formerly felt." It is the office of this faculty "to present us with an exact transcript of what we have felt or perceived." In this respect it differs from imagination, which gives not an exact transcript, but one more or less altered or modified, combining our conceptions so as to form new results. It differs from memory in that it involves no idea of time, no recognition of the thing conceived, as a thing formerly perceived.