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INTRODUCTION.

In the beginning of conscious thought, we find ourselves occupying the points in time and space called here and now, with little if any idea of duration, expansion, or succession. From the position of objects around us we soon acquire the ideas of the near and the remote; and the succession of events, marking the lapse of time, suggests the ideas of the heretofore and the hereafter. As the senses become trained to intelligent exercise, experience and observation continue to furnish clews by which our thoughts are conducted backward and forward in time and abroad in space, farther and farther, till we find and feel that we sustain necessary relations to the infinite. And though our minds cannot comprehend the infinite, yet neither can the utmost extent of the finite limit or circumscribe the range of our minds. Whether we contemplate time or space, we can no more fix upon a bound than we can comprehend the boundless. However remote the point or the line which is arrived at, thought will pause but for a moment and then go forward. This progression of thought, however it may be assisted by education and culture, seems to be natural and necessary from the constitution of the mind itself. And thus infinitude, though incomprehensible, is an object of our intuition; and our relations to the infinite are impressed

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