(_b_) Furthermore, since the intellect forms its notions of them, through the aid of the senses and the imagination, from actual realizations of themselves or their constituent factors, and since it understands them to be intrinsically possible, or free from intrinsic incompatibility of their constituent factors, it conceives them to be capable of indefinitely repeated actualizations throughout time and space—unless it sees some special reason to the contrary, as it does in the case of the Necessary Being, and (according to some philosophers) in the case of purely immaterial beings or pure spirits. That is to say it _universalizes_ them, and sees them to be capable of existing at any and every conceivable time and place. This relation of theirs to space is not likely to be confounded with the _immensity_ or _ubiquity_ of God. But their corresponding relation to time is sometimes described as _eternity_; and if it is so described it must be carefully distinguished from the _positive_ eternity of God, the Immutable Being. To distinguish it from the latter it is usually described as _negative_ eternity,—this indifference of the possible essence to actual existence at any particular point of time. But apart from this relation which we conceive it as having to existence in the order of actual reality, can we, or do we, or must we conceive it as in itself an intrinsic possibility _from all eternity_, in the sense that it _never began_ to be intrinsically possible, and will never cease to be so? Must we attribute to it a _positive_ eternity, not of course of actuality or existence, but of _ideal_ being, as an object of thought to an Eternally Existing Mind? What is this supposed eternal possibility of the possible essence? Is it nothing actual: the possible as such is nothing actual. But is it anything real? Has it only ideal being—_esse ideale_ or _intentionale_? And has it this only in and from the human mind, or independently of the human mind? And also independently of the _actual_ essences from which the human mind gets the data for its thought,—so that we must ascribe to it an _eternal_ ideal being? To these questions we shall return presently.