THE SIX ENNEADS [144]
at some one point complete and at some other lacking. Things and Beings in the Time order- even when to all appearance complete, as a body is when fit to harbour a soul- are still bound to sequence; they are deficient to the extent of that thing, Time, which they need: let them have it, present to them and running side by side with them, and they are by that very fact incomplete; completeness is attributed to them only by an accident of language. 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. Itself having no quantity, it can have no contact with anything quantitative since its Life cannot be made a thing of fragments, in contradiction to the partlessness which is its character; it must be without parts in the Life as in the essence. 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. 7. Now comes the question whether, in all this discussion, we are not merely helping to make out a case for some other order of Beings and talking of matters alien to ourselves. 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. 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. 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. But, as things are, our best beginning is to range over the most noteworthy of the ancient opinions and see whether any of them accord with ours. Existing explanations of Time seem to fall into three classes: Time is variously identified with what we know as Movement, with a moved object, and with some phenomenon of Movement: obviously it cannot be Rest or a resting object or any phenomenon of rest, since, in its characteristic idea, it is concerned with change. Of those that explain it as Movement, some identify it with Absolute Movement [or with the total of Movement], others with that of the All. Those that make it a moved object would identify it with the orb of the All. Those that conceive it as some phenomenon, or some period, of Movement treat it, severally, either as a standard of measure or as something inevitably accompanying Movement, abstract or definite. 8. Movement Time cannot be- whether a definite act of moving is meant or a united total made up of all such acts- since movement, in either sense, takes place in Time. And, of course, if there is any movement not in Time, the identification with Time becomes all the