Eternity

We must not muddle together Being and Non-Being, time and eternity, not even everlasting time with the eternal; we cannot make laps and stages of an absolute unity; all must be taken together, wheresoever and howsoever we handle it; and it must be taken at that, not even as an undivided block of time but as the Life of ETERNITY, a stretch not made up of periods but completely rounded, outside of all notion of time. Enneads I,5,

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, both by instinct and by the more detailed attack of thought, we hold an adequate experience of them in our minds without more ado. Enneads III,7,

What, then, does ETERNITY really mean to those who describe it as something different from Time? We begin with ETERNITY, since when the standing Exemplar is known, its representation in image – which Time is understood to be – will be clearly apprehended – though it is of course equally true, admitting this relationship to Time as image to ETERNITY the original, that if we chose to begin by identifying Time we could thence proceed upwards by Recognition (the Platonic Anamnesis) and become aware of the Kind which it images. Enneads III,7,

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, ETERNITY as something most august; most august, too, is the Intellectual Kind; and there is no possibility of saying that the one is more majestic than the other, since no such degrees can be asserted in the Above-World; there is therefore a certain excuse for the identification – all the more since the Intellectual Substance and ETERNITY have the one scope and content. Enneads III,7,

Still; by the fact of representing the one as contained within the other, by making ETERNITY a predicate to the Intellectual Existents – “the Nature of the Exemplar,” we read, “is eternal” – we cancel the identification; ETERNITY becomes a separate thing, something surrounding that Nature or lying within it or present to it. And the majestic quality of both does not prove them identical: it might be transmitted from the one to the other. So, too, ETERNITY and the Divine Nature envelop the same entities, yes; but not in the same way: the Divine may be thought of as enveloping parts, ETERNITY as embracing its content in an unbroken whole, with no implication of part, but merely from the fact that all eternal things are so by conforming to it. Enneads III,7,

May we, perhaps, identify ETERNITY with Repose-There as Time has been identified with Movement-Here? This would bring on the counter-question whether ETERNITY is presented to us as Repose in the general sense or as the Repose that envelops the Intellectual Essence. Enneads III,7,

On the first supposition we can no more talk of Repose being eternal than of ETERNITY being eternal: to be eternal is to participate in an outside thing, ETERNITY. Enneads III,7,

Further, if ETERNITY is Repose, what becomes of Eternal Movement, which, by this identification, would become a thing of Repose? Again, the conception of Repose scarcely seems to include that of perpetuity – I am speaking of course not of perpetuity in the time-order (which might follow on absence of movement) but of that which we have in mind when we speak of ETERNITY. Enneads III,7,

If, on the other hand, ETERNITY is identified with the Repose of the divine Essence, all species outside of the divine are put outside of ETERNITY. Enneads III,7,

Besides, the conception of ETERNITY requires not merely Repose but also unity – and, in order to keep it distinct from Time, a unity including interval – but neither that unity nor that absence of interval enters into the conception of Repose as such. Enneads III,7,

Lastly, this unchangeable Repose in unity is a predicate asserted of ETERNITY, which, therefore, is not itself Repose, the absolute, but a participant in Repose. Enneads III,7,

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. Enneads III,7,

Then we reconstruct; we sum all into a collected unity once more, a sole Life in the Supreme; we concentrate Diversity and all the endless production of act: thus we know Identity, a concept or, rather, a Life never varying, not becoming what previously it was not, the thing immutably itself, broken by no interval; and knowing this, we know ETERNITY. Enneads III,7,

ETERNITY, therefore – while not the Substratum (not the essential foundation of the Divine or Intellectual Principle) – may be considered as the radiation of this Substratum: it exists as the announcement of the Identity in the Divine, of that state – of being thus and not otherwise – which characterizes what has no futurity but eternally is. Enneads III,7,

That which neither has been nor will be, but simply possesses being; that which enjoys stable existence as neither in process of change nor having ever changed – that is ETERNITY. Thus we come to the definition: the Life – instantaneously entire, complete, at no point broken into period or part – which belongs to the Authentic Existent by its very existence, this is the thing we were probing for – this is ETERNITY. Enneads III,7,

In one aspect, no doubt, ETERNITY resides in a partial phase of the All-Being; but in another aspect it is inherent in the All taken as a totality, since that Authentic All is not a thing patched up out of external parts, but is authentically an all because its parts are engendered by itself. It is like the truthfulness in the Supreme which is not an agreement with some outside fact or being but is inherent in each member about which it is the truth. To an authentic All it is not enough that it be everything that exists: it must possess allness in the full sense that nothing whatever is absent from it. Then nothing is in store for it: if anything were to come, that thing must have been lacking to it, and it was, therefore, not All. And what, of a Nature contrary to its own, could enter into it when it is (the Supreme and therefore) immune? Since nothing can accrue to it, it cannot seek change or be changed or ever have made its way into Being. Enneads III,7,

Thus the perfect and all-comprehensive essence of the Authentic Existent does not consist merely in the completeness inherent in its members; its essence includes, further, its established immunity from all lack with the exclusion, also, of all that is without Being – for not only must all things be contained in the All and Whole, but it can contain nothing that is, or was ever, non-existent – and this State and Nature of the Authentic Existent is ETERNITY: in our very word, ETERNITY means Ever-Being. Enneads III,7,

Imagine, then, the state of a being which cannot fall away from the vision of this but is for ever caught to it, held by the spell of its grandeur, kept to it by virtue of a nature itself unfailing – or even the state of one that must labour towards ETERNITY by directed effort, but then to rest in it, immoveable at any point assimilated to it, co-eternal with it, contemplating ETERNITY and the Eternal by what is Eternal within the self. Enneads III,7,

Accepting this as a true account of an eternal, a perdurable Existent – one which never turns to any Kind outside itself, that possesses life complete once for all, that has never received any accession, that is now receiving none and will never receive any – we have, with the statement of a perduring Being, the statement also of perdurance and of ETERNITY: perdurance is the corresponding state arising from the (divine) substratum and inherent in it; ETERNITY (the Principle as distinguished from the property of everlastingness) is that substratum carrying that state in manifestation. Enneads III,7,

ETERNITY, thus, is of the order of the supremely great; it proves on investigation to be identical with God: it may fitly be described as God made manifest, as God declaring what He is, as existence without jolt or change, and therefore as also the firmly living. Enneads III,7,

And it should be no shock that we find plurality in it; each of the Beings of the Supreme is multiple by virtue of unlimited force; for to be limitless implies failing at no point, and ETERNITY is pre-eminently the limitless since (having no past or future) it spends nothing of its own substance. Enneads III,7,

Thus a close enough definition of ETERNITY would be that it is a life limitless in the full sense of being all the life there is and a life which, knowing nothing of past or future to shatter its completeness, possesses itself intact for ever. To the notion of a Life (a Living-Principle) all-comprehensive add that it never spends itself, and we have the statement of a Life instantaneously infinite. Enneads III,7,

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 – finely, and by no means inadvertently but with profound intention – wrote those words of his, “ETERNITY stable in Unity”; he wishes to convey that ETERNITY is not merely something circling on its traces into a final unity but has (instantaneous) Being about The One as the unchanging Life of the Authentic Existent. This is certainly what we have been seeking: this Principle, at rest within rest with the One, is ETERNITY; possessing this stable quality, being itself at once the absolute self-identical and none the less the active manifestation of an unchanging Life set towards the Divine and dwelling within It, untrue, therefore, neither on the side of Being nor on the side of Life – this will be ETERNITY (the Real-Being we have sought). Enneads III,7,

If, then, there is no first or last in this Principle, if existence is its most authentic possession and its very self, and this in the sense that its existence is Essence or Life – then, once again, we meet here what we have been discussing, ETERNITY. Enneads III,7,

But the conception of ETERNITY demands something which is in its nature complete without sequence; it is not satisfied by something measured out to any remoter time or even by something limitless, but, in its limitless reach, still having the progression of futurity: it requires something immediately possessed of the due fullness of Being, something whose Being does not depend upon any quantity (such as instalments of time) but subsists before all quantity. Enneads III,7,

The phrase “He was good” (used by Plato of the Demiurge) refers to the Idea of the All; and its very indefiniteness signifies the utter absense of relation to Time: so that even this Universe has had no temporal beginning; and if we speak of something “before” it, that is only in the sense of the Cause from which it takes its Eternal Existence. Plato used the word merely for the convenience of exposition, and immediately corrects it as inappropriate to the order vested with the ETERNITY he conceives and affirms. Enneads III,7,

But how could that be? What understanding can there be failing some point of contact? And what contact could there be with the utterly alien? We must then have, ourselves, some part or share in ETERNITY. Enneads III,7,

Still, how is this possible to us who exist in Time? The whole question turns on the distinction between being in Time and being in ETERNITY, and this will be best realized by probing to the Nature of Time. We must, therefore, descend from ETERNITY to the investigation of Time, to the realm of Time: till now we have been taking the upward way; we must now take the downward – not to the lowest levels but within the degree in which Time itself is a descent from ETERNITY. Enneads III,7,

If the venerable sages of former days had not treated of Time, our method would be to begin by linking to (the idea of) ETERNITY (the idea of) its Next (its inevitable downward or outgoing subsequent in the same order), then setting forth the probable nature of such a Next and proceeding to show how the conception thus formed tallies with our own doctrine. Enneads III,7,

To this end we must go back to the state we affirmed of ETERNITY, unwavering Life, undivided totality, limitless, knowing no divagation, at rest in unity and intent upon it. Time was not yet: or at least it did not exist for the Eternal Beings, though its being was implicit in the Idea and Principle of progressive derivation. Enneads III,7,

But from the Divine Beings thus at rest within themselves, how did this Time first emerge? We can scarcely call upon the Muses to recount its origin since they were not in existence then – perhaps not even if they had been. The engendered thing, Time, itself, can best tell us how it rose and became manifest; something thus its story would run: Time at first – in reality before that “first” was produced by desire of succession – Time lay, self-concentrated, at rest within the Authentic Existent: it was not yet Time; it was merged in the Authentic and motionless with it. But there was an active principle there, one set on governing itself and realizing itself (= the All-Soul), and it chose to aim at something more than its present: it stirred from its rest, and Time stirred with it. And we, stirring to a ceaseless succession, to a next, to the discrimination of identity and the establishment of ever-new difference, traversed a portion of the outgoing path and produced an image of ETERNITY, produced Time. Enneads III,7,

Would it, then, be sound to define Time as the Life of the Soul in movement as it passes from one stage of act or experience to another? Yes; for ETERNITY, we have said, is Life in repose, unchanging, self-identical, always endlessly complete; and there is to be an image of ETERNITY-Time – such an image as this lower All presents of the Higher Sphere. Therefore over against that higher life there must be another life, known by the same name as the more veritable life of the Soul; over against that movement of the Intellectual Soul there must be the movement of some partial phase; over against that identity, unchangeableness and stability there must be that which is not constant in the one hold but puts forth multitudinous acts; over against that oneness without extent or interval there must be an image of oneness, a unity of link and succession; over against the immediately infinite and all-comprehending, that which tends, yes, to infinity but by tending to a perpetual futurity; over against the Whole in concentration, there must be that which is to be a Whole by stages never final. The lesser must always be working towards the increase of its Being, this will be its imitation of what is immediately complete, self-realized, endless without stage: only thus can its Being reproduce that of the Higher. Enneads III,7,

Time, however, is not to be conceived as outside of Soul; ETERNITY is not outside of the Authentic Existent: nor is it to be taken as a sequence or succession to Soul, any more than ETERNITY is to the Divine. It is a thing seen upon Soul, inherent, coeval to it, as ETERNITY to the Intellectual Realm. Enneads III,7,

What would then exist but ETERNITY? All would remain in unity; how could there be any diversity of things? What Earlier or Later would there be, what long-lasting or short-lasting? What ground would lie ready to the Soul’s operation but the Supreme in which it has its Being? Or, indeed, what operative tendency could it have even to That since a prior separation is the necessary condition of tendency? The very sphere of the Universe would not exist; for it cannot antedate Time: it, too, has its Being and its Movement in Time; and if it ceased to move, the Soul-Act (which is the essence of Time) continuing, we could measure the period of its Repose by that standard outside it. Enneads III,7,

Upon the point of the means by which it is known, he remarks that the Circuit advances an infinitesimal distance for every infinitesimal segment of Time so that from that observation it is possible to estimate what the Time is, how much it amounts to: but when his purpose is to explain its essential nature he tells us that it sprang into Being simultaneously with the Heavenly system, a reproduction of ETERNITY, its image in motion, Time necessarily unresting as the Life with which it must keep pace: and “coeval with the Heavens” because it is this same Life (of the Divine Soul) which brings the Heavens also into being; Time and the Heavens are the work of the one Life. Enneads III,7,

But: – we treat the Kosmic Movement as overarched by that of the Soul and bring it under Time; yet we do not set under Time that Soul-Movement itself with all its endless progression: what is our explanation of this paradox? Simply, that the Soul-Movement has for its Prior ETERNITY which knows neither its progression nor its extension. The descent towards Time begins with this Soul-Movement; it made Time and harbours Time as a concomitant to its Act. Enneads III,7,

And this is why Time can never be broken apart, any more than ETERNITY which, similarly, under diverse manifestations, has its Being as an integral constituent of all the eternal Existences. Enneads III,7,

But there is a difficulty affecting this entire settlement: ETERNITY is characteristic of the Intellectual-Principle, time of the soul – for we hold that time has its substantial being in the activity of the soul, and springs from soul – and, since time is a thing of division and comports a past, it would seem that the activity producing it must also be a thing of division, and that its attention to that past must imply that even the All-Soul has memory? We repeat, identity belongs to the eternal, time must be the medium of diversity; otherwise there is nothing to distinguish them, especially since we deny that the activities of the soul can themselves experience change. Enneads IV,4,

That archetypal world is the true Golden Age, age of Kronos, who is the Intellectual-Principle as being the offspring or exuberance of God. For here is contained all that is immortal: nothing here but is Divine Mind; all is God; this is the place of every soul. Here is rest unbroken: for how can that seek change, in which all is well; what need that reach to, which holds all within itself; what increase can that desire, which stands utterly achieved? All its content, thus, is perfect, that itself may be perfect throughout, as holding nothing that is less than the divine, nothing that is less than intellective. Its knowing is not by search but by possession, its blessedness inherent, not acquired; for all belongs to it eternally and it holds the authentic ETERNITY imitated by Time which, circling round the Soul, makes towards the new thing and passes by the old. Soul deals with thing after thing – now Socrates; now a horse: always some one entity from among beings – but the Intellectual-Principle is all and therefore its entire content is simultaneously present in that identity: this is pure being in eternal actuality; nowhere is there any future, for every then is a now; nor is there any past, for nothing there has ever ceased to be; everything has taken its stand for ever, an identity well pleased, we might say, to be as it is; and everything, in that entire content, is Intellectual-Principle and Authentic Existence; and the total of all is Intellectual-Principle entire and Being entire. Intellectual-Principle by its intellective act establishes Being, which in turn, as the object of intellection, becomes the cause of intellection and of existence to the Intellectual-Principle – though, of course, there is another cause of intellection which is also a cause to Being, both rising in a source distinct from either. Enneads: V I

Time in its ceaseless onward sliding produces parted interval; ETERNITY stands in identity, pre-eminent, vaster by unending power than Time with all the vastness of its seeming progress; Time is like a radial line running out apparently to infinity but dependent upon that, its centre, which is the pivot of all its movement; as it goes it tells of that centre, but the centre itself is the unmoving principle of all the movement. Enneads VI,5,