to them, the entire bodily frame of the child being formed out of food. But if this Mother (Matter) does give anything to the offspring it does so not in its quality as Matter but as being (in some degree) an Ideal-Form ; for only the Idea is generative ; the contrary Kind is sterile.
This, I think, is why the doctors of old, teaching through symbols and mystic representations, exhibit the ancient Hermes with the genera- tive organ always in active posture ; this is to convey that the generator of things of sense is the Intellectual Reason Principle : the sterility of Matter, eternally unmoved, is indicated by the eunuchs surrounding it in its representation as the All-Mother.
This too exalting title is conferred upon it in order to indicate that it is the source of things in the sense of being their underlie : it is an approximate name chosen for a general conception ; there is no intention of suggesting a complete parallel with motherhood to those not satisfied with a surface impression but needing a precisely true presentment ; by a remote symbolism, the nearest they could find, they indicate that Matter is sterile, not female to full effect, female in receptivity only, not in pregnancy : this they accomplish by exhibiting Matter as approached by what is neither female nor effectively male, but castrated of that impregnating power which belongs only to the unchangeably masculine.
Time and Eternity
Eternity and Time ; two entirely separate things, we explain “ the one having its being in the everlasting Kind, the other in the realm of Process, in our own Universe ” ; and, by continually using the words and assigning every phenomenon to the one or the other category, we come to think that, both by instinct and by the more detailed attack of thought, we hold an adequate experience of them in our minds without more ado.
When, perhaps, we make the effort to clarify our ideas and close
Iii. 7. 2]
into the heart of the matter we are at once unsettled : our doubts throw us back upon ancient explanations ; we choose among the various theories, or among the various interpretations of some one theory, and so we come to rest, satisfied, if only we can counter a question with an approved answer, and glad to be absolved from further enquiry.
Now, we must believe that some of the venerable philosophers of old discovered the truth ; but it is important to examine which of them really hit the mark and by what guiding principle we can ourselves attain to certitude.
What, then, does Eternity really mean to those who (thus casually) 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 of 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.
What definition are we to give of 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 — aU 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 making 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 pre- sented 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 per- petuity— 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.
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
Ill- 7-3]
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 (more exactly) 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 recognise 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. AU 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 characterises 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 ?
There exists no source or ground from which anything could make its way into that standing present ; any imagined entrant will prove to be not alien but already integral. And as it can never come to be anything at present outside it, so, necessarily, it cannot include any past ; what can there be that once was in it and now is gone ? Futurity, similarly, is banned ; nothing could be yet to come to it. Thus no ground is left for its existence but that it be what it is.
That which neither has been nor will be, but simply possesses being ; that which enjoys stable existence as neither in process of change nor having ever changed— that is Eternity. Thus we come to the definition : the Life — instantaneously entire, complete, at no point broken into period or part — which belongs to the Authentic Existent by its very existence, this is the thing we were probing for — this is Eternity.
We must, however, avoid thinking of it as an accidental from outside grafted upon that Nature ; it is native to it, integral to it.
It is discerned as present essentially in that Nature like everything else that we can predicate There — all immanent, springing from that Essence and inherent to that Essence. For whatsoever has primal Being must be immanent to the Firsts and be a First — Eternity equally with The Good that is among them and of them and equally with the truth that is among them.
In one aspect, no doubt. Eternity resides in a partial phase of the All-Being ; but in another aspect it is inherent in the All taken as a totality, since that Authentic All is not a thing patched up out of external parts, but is authentically an all because its parts are engendered by itself. It is like the truthfulness in the Supreme which is not an agreement with some outside fact or being but is inherent in each member about which it is the truth. To an authentic All it is not enough that it be ever^dhing that exists : it must possess all-ness in the full sense that nothing what- ever is absent from it. Then nothing is in store for it : if anything were to come, that thing must have been lacking to it, and it was, therefore, not All. And what, of a Nature contrary to its own, could enter into it
Iii. 7. 4]
lOI
when it is (the Supreme and therefore) immune ? Since nothing can accrue to it, it cannot seek change or be changed or ever have made its way into Being.
Engendered things are in continuous process of acquisition ; elimi- nate futurity, therefore, and at once they lose their being ; if the non- engendered are made amenable to futurity they are thrown down from the seat of their existence, for, clearly, existence is not theirs by their nature if it appears only as a being about to be, a becoming, an advancing from stage to stage.
The essential existence of generated things seems to lie in their existing from the time of their generation to the ultimate of time after which they cease to be : but such an existence is compact of futurity, and the annulment of that futurity means the stopping of the life and therefore of the essential existence.
Such a stoppage would be true, also, of the (generated) All in so far as it is a thing of process and change : for this reason it keeps hastening towards its future, dreading to rest, seeking to draw Being to itself by a perpetual variety of production and action and by its circling in a sort of ambition after Essential Existence.
And here we have, incidentally, lighted upon the cause of the Circuit of the All ; it is a movement which seeks perpetuity by way of futurity.
The Primals, on the contrary, in their state of blessedness have no such aspiration towards anything to come : they are the whole, now ; what life may be thought of as their due, they possess entire ; they, therefore, seek nothing, since there is nothing future to them, nothing external to them in which any futurity could find lodgement.