Note 548 — Chapter X

Footnote 548: (return) The reader must familiarize himself with the Platonic notion of "eternity" as a fixed state out of time existing contemporaneous with one in time, to appreciate the doctrine of Plato as stated above. If we regard his idea of eternity as merely an indefinite extension of time, with a past, a present, and a future, we can offer no rational interpretation of his doctrine of the eternal nature of the rational essence of the soul. An eternal nature "generated" in a "past" or "present" time is a contradiction. But that was not Plato's conception of "eternity," as the reader will discover on perusing the "Timæus" (ch. xiv.). "God resolved to create a moving image of eternity, and out of that eternity which reposes in its own unchangeable unity he framed an eternal image moving according to numerical succession, which we call Time. Nothing can be more inaccurate than to apply the terms, past, present, future, to real Being, which is immovable. Past and future are expressions only suitable to generation which proceeds through time." Time reposes on the bosom of eternity, as all bodies are in space.