Note (return) — Chapter XI

This doctrine of the eternity of the free and rational element of the soul must, of course, appear strange and even repulsive to those who are unacquainted with the Platonic notion of eternity as a fixed state out of time, which has no past, present, or future, and is simply that which "always is"--an everlasting now. The soul, in its elements of rationality and freedom, has existed anterior to time, because it now exists in eternity. 608 In its actual manifestations and personal history it is to be contemplated as a "generated being," having a commencement in time.