Nay, by our arithmetical powers we can put down in cipher,
or conceive _symbolically_ (which is the meagrest of all conceptions)
millions of millions of centuries; these being after all but compounds
of our alphabet of enduring or repeated sensations and thoughts. We can
suppose this arithmetical process to operate upon past duration or upon
future duration, and there is no limit to the numbers that we can write
down. But there is one thing that we cannot do; we cannot fix upon a
point when Time or succession began, or upon a point when it will cease.
That is an operation not in keeping with our faculties; the very
supposition is impracticable. We cannot entertain the notion of a state
of things wherein the fact of continuance had no place; the effort
belies itself. Time is inseparable from our mental nature; whatever we
imagine, we must imagine as enduring. Some philosophers have supposed
that we must be endowed by nature with the conception of Time, before we
begin to exercise our senses; but the difficulty would be to deprive us
of that adjunct without extinguishing our mental nature. Give us
sensibility, and you cannot withhold the element of Time.
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