ver, alike aim at an object which is beyond positive
conception, and which can be accepted only as something to be believed in
spite of its inconceivability. To conceive an existence beyond the first
moment of time, and to connect that existence as cause with the
subsequent temporal succession of effects, we must conceive time itself
as non-existent and then commencing to exist. But when we make the
effort to conceive time as non-existent, we find it impossible to do
so. Time, as the universal condition of human consciousness, clings round
the very conception which strives to destroy it, clings round the
language in which we speak of an existence _before_ time. Nor are we more
successful when we attempt to conceive an infinite regress of time, and an
infinite series of dependent existences in time. To say nothing of the
direct contradiction involved in the notion of an unconditioned
_whole_,--a something completed,--composed of infinite parts--of parts
never completed,--even if we abandon the Whole, and with it the
Unconditioned, and attempt merely to conceive an infinite succession
of conditioned existences--conditioned, absurdly enough, by nothing
beyond themselves,--we find, that in order to do so, we must add moment to
moment for ever--a process which would require an eternity for its
accomplishment.[P] Moreover, the chain of dependent existences in this
infinite succession is not, like a mathematical series, composed of
abstract and homogeneous units; it is made up of divers phenomena, of a
regressive line of causes, each distinct from the other. Wherever,
therefore, I stop in my addition, I do not positively conceive the terms
which lie beyond. I apprehend them only as a series of unknown
_somethings_, of which I may believe _that_ they are, but am unable to
say _what_ they are.

[P] See _Discussions_, p. 29. Of course by this is not meant
that no duration can be conceived except in a duration
equally long--that a thousand years, _e.g._, can only be
conceived in a thousand years. A thousand years may be
conceived as one unit: infinity cannot; for an unit is
something complete, and therefore limited. What is meant
is, that any period of time, however long, is conceived
as capable of further increase, and therefore as not
infinite. An infinite duration can have no time before
or after it; and thus cannot resemble any portion of
finite time, ho