Categoria: Tratado 45 (III,7)

Eneada-III, 7, 3 III. Nor must we think that this (eternity) happens externally to that nature (viz. to being itself), but that it is in it, and from it, and subsists together with it. For it is seen to be profoundly inherent in it. For perceiving all such other things as we say are there,…

Eneada-III, 7, 1 1. Eternity and Time; two entirely separate things, we explain “the one having its being in the everlasting Kind, the other in the realm of Process, in our own Universe”; and, by continually using the words and assigning every phenomenon to the one or the other category, we come to think that,…

Eneada-III, 7, 2 2. What definition are we to give to Eternity? Can it be identified with the (divine or) Intellectual Substance itself? This would be like identifying Time with the Universe of Heavens and Earth – an opinion, it is true, which appears to have had its adherents. No doubt we conceive, we know,…

Eneada-III, 7, 3 3. What, then, can this be, this something in virtue of which we declare the entire divine Realm to be Eternal, everlasting? We must come to some understanding of this perpetuity with which Eternity is either identical or in conformity. It must at once, be at once something in the nature of…

Eneada-III, 7, 4 4. We must, however, avoid thinking of it as an accidental from outside grafted upon that Nature: it is native to it, integral to it. It is discerned as present essentially in that Nature like everything else that we can predicate There – all immanent, springing from that Essence and inherent to…

Eneada-III, 7, 5 5. This Ever-Being is realized when upon examination of an object I am able to say – or rather, to know – that in its very Nature it is incapable of increment or change; anything that fails by that test is no Ever-Existent or, at least, no Ever-All-Existent. But is perpetuity enough…

Eneada-III, 7, 6 6. Now the Principle this stated, all good and beauty, and everlasting, is centred in The One, sprung from It, and pointed towards It, never straying from It, but ever holding about It and in It and living by Its law; and it is in this reference, as I judge, that Plato…

Eneada-III, 7, 8 8. Movement Time cannot be – whether a definite act of moving is meant or a united total made up of all such acts – since movement, in either sense, takes place in Time. And, of course, if there is any movement not in Time, the identification with Time becomes all the…

Eneada-III, 7, 9 9. “A Number, a Measure, belonging to Movement?” This, at least, is plausible since Movement is a continuous thin; but let us consider. To begin with, we have the doubt which met us when we probed its identification with extent of Movement: is Time the measure of any and every Movement? Have…

Eneada-III, 7, 10 10. Time, again, has been described as some sort of a sequence upon Movement, but we learn nothing from this, nothing is said, until we know what it is that produces this sequential thing: probably the cause and not the result would turn out to be Time. And, admitting such a thing,…

Eneada-III, 7, 12 12. We are brought thus to the conception of a Natural-Principle – Time – a certain expanse (a quantitative phase) of the Life of the Soul, a principle moving forward by smooth and uniform changes following silently upon each other – a Principle, then, whose Act is sequent. But let us conceive…

Eneada-III, 7, 13 13. The Spheral Circuit, then, performed in Time, indicates it: but when we come to Time itself there is no question of its being “within” something else: it must be primary, a thing “within itself.” It is that in which all the rest happens, in which all movement and rest exist smoothly…

Eneada-III, 7, 1 I. With respect to eternity and time, we say that each of these is different from the other, and that one of them indeed is conversant with a perpetual nature, but the other about that which is generated. We also think that we have a certain clear perception of these in our…

Eneada-III, 7, 2 II. What, therefore, will that be according to which we say, the whole world which is there is eternal and perpetual? And what is perpetuity ? Whether it is the same with eternity, or eternity subsists according to perpetuity. Shall we say, therefore, that it is necessary to conceive of eternity as…

Eneada-III, 7, 4 IV. He, however, will know that eternity thus subsists, who by the projecting a energies of intellect is able to speak concerning it: or rather, he who sees it to be a thing of such a kind, that nothing in short has ever been generated about it; for otherwise it would not…

Eneada-III, 7, 5 V. Because, however, such a nature as this, thus all-beautiful and perpetual, subsists about the one, proceeding from and with it, and in no respect departing from it, but always abides about and in the one, and lives according to it, hence I think it is beautifully and with a profundity of…

Eneada-III, 7, 6 VI. Do we, therefore, bear witness to the things of which we now speak, as to things foreign from our nature ? But how is this possible ? For how can intellectual perception be effected, except by contact ? And how can we come into contact with things that are foreign to…

Eneada-III, 7, 8 VIII. In the next place, it must be considered how time is the number or measure of motion; for it is better to assert this of it, on account of its continuity. In the first place, therefore, here also it may be doubted, whether it is similarly the number or measure of…

Eneada-III, 7, 9 IX. But to say that time is an appendix of motion, is not to teach what time is, nor ought this to be said before it is shown what the appendix is. For perhaps it may be time. With respect to this appendix, however, it must be considered, whether it has a…