X. Again, therefore, it is requisite that we should betake ourselves to that condition of being which we have said is in eternity; a condition which is immutable, and at once total, a life now infinite and perfectly inflexible, and abiding in one, and directed to the one. But time was not yet, or at least was not in those natures; but was about to be generated1 by the reason and nature of that which is posterior. Intelligibles, therefore, quietly energizing in themselves, he who desires to know how time first fell, will not perhaps call upon the Muses who did not then exist, to tell him. Perhaps, however, he will, since the Muses also then had a being.2 Perhaps, too, he will find time itself generated, so far as it is generated and unfolded into light. Bnt he will speak about it as follows:
Before this priority originated, and was indigent of the posterior, the former was quiescent together with the latter in being, time not yet existing; but itself also quietly abiding [i.e. subsisting casually] in real being. A certain nature, however, much conversant with action, wishing to govern, and possess authority from itself, and chasing to explore more of the present, was itself indeed moved, and together with it likewise time, always tending to hereafter and the posterior, and not to the same, but to another, and again another existence. But we from this motion producing a certain length of progression, conceive time to be the image of eternity. For since there was a certain unquiet power of the soul, wishing always to transfer what it there saw to something else, it was not willing that an at-once-collected all should be present with it. But as reason [i.e. a productive principle] evolving itself from a quiet seed, produces as it fancies an abundant progression, abolishing the abundant by division, and instead of the one subsisting in itself, consuming the one which is not in itself, and thus proceeds into a more imbecile length; in a similar manner, this nature of soul, producing the sensible through the imitation of the intelligible world, and being moved not with the motion which is there, but with a motion resembling it, and wishing to be its image, in the first place indeed, renders itself temporal, producing this instead of eternity. In the next place, it causes that which is generated to be subservient to time, making the whole of it to be in time, and comprehending all the progressions of it in time. For the world is moved in the nature of soul; since there is not any other place of this universe than soul, and in the time of soul it is moved. For soul exhibiting its energy successively, generates together with its energy that which is successive, and proceeds in conjunction with another reasoning process after that energy, which was not before; since, neither was the discursive energy of reason effective, nor the present life of soul similar to that which preceded it. Hence, at the same time, there is another life, and this other life will have another time. Distance of life, therefore [or the interval between one life and another], will be attended with time. The perpetual extension of life also to the anterior part, will have perpetual time: and the past life will be accompanied with past time. If, therefore, some one should say that time is the energy of soul, proceeding in a transitive motion from one life to another, will he not appear to say something to the purpose ?3 For if eternity is life consisting in permanency, and in an invariable sameness of subsistence, and which is now infinite, but it is necessary that time should be the image of eternity, just as this universe is the image of the intelligible world; — if this be the case, instead of the life which is there, it is necessary there should be another life of the discursive power of the mundane soul, homonymous as it were to the life of eternity; and instead of intellectual motion, that there should be the motion of a certain part of the soul. It is also necessary, that instead of an invariable sameness and permanency of subsistence, there should be that which does not abide in the same, but always has another and another energy. Likewise, that instead of an essence which is without interval and one, there should be an image of the one, and which possesses unity in continuity of succession. That instead of that which is now infinite, and a whole, there should be that which proceeds ad infinitum, according to what is perpetually successive. And that instead of an at-once-collected whole, there should be that which is a whole according to parts, and is always about to be a whole. For thus it will imitate that which is now wholly what it is, and which is at-once-collected, and infinite, if it wishes its being to consist in perpetual acquisition; since it will thus also imitate the being of eternity. It is necessary, however, not to assume time externally to soul, as neither is eternity in the intelligible world external to being. Nor again, must it be considered as any thing consecutive, or posterior to soul, as neither is eternity to being. But it must be beheld within, and subsisting together with soul, in the same manner as eternity with being.
Time, as well as the world, is said to have been generated, not” because it once was not, for it always existed, but because it depends for its subsistence on causes naturally prior to itself. ↩
The Muses, considered according to their subsistence in Apollo, belong to the intellectual order, and are therefore superior to time. But if time is supposed to have had a beginning, then the Muses, according to their mundane subsistence, had no existence prior to the generation of time. To say, therefore, that the Muses did not once exist, is equivalent to the assertion that the intellectual is prior to the mundane order of them, according to nature, order, dignity, and causality. ↩
Time, however, according to Proclus, is a medium between that which is alone the cause of motion, as soul, and that which is alone immoveable, as intellect. Hence time is truly, so far as it is considered in itself, immoveable, but so far as it is in its participants, it is moveable, and subsists together with them, unfolding itself into them. He adds, hence it is a certain proceeding intellect, established indeed in eternity, but proceeding and abundantly flowing into the things which are guarded by it. This definition of time by Proclus, appears to me to be uncommonly beautiful and accurate. See the whole of the passage from which it is taken, in the Additional Notes to my translation of the ” Timaeus ” of Plato. ↩