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.
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, 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.
Still; by the fact of representing the one as contained within the other, by ****** 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 unity and yet a notion compact of diversity, or a Kind, a Nature, that waits upon the Existents of that Other World, either associated with them or known in and upon them, they collectively being this Nature which, with all its unity, is yet diverse in power and essence.Considering this multifarious power, we declare it to be Essence in its relation to this sphere which is substratum or underlie to it; where we see life we think of it as Movement; where all is unvaried self-identity we call it Repose; and we know it as, at once, Difference and Identity when we recognize that all is unity with variety.
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.
We know it as a Life changelessly motionless and ever holding the Universal content [time, space, and phenomena] in actual presence;not this now and now that other, but always all; not existing now in one mode and now in another, but a consummation without part or interval.All its content is in immediate concentration as at one point; nothing in it ever knows development: all remains identical within itself, knowing nothing of change, for ever in a Now since nothing of it has passed away or will come into being, but what it is now, that it is ever.
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.
What future, in fact, could bring to that Being anything which it now does not possess; and could it come to be anything which it is not once for all?