Chapter 10, Section 1d

If Time be thought of as an infinite series of finite numbers Eternity is the sum of that series and not its process. But the name may be applied loosely to the process, though this is generally to be avoided. According to St. Thomas, Eternity measures Rest, and Time measures Motion: Eternity is a totum simul and Time is successivum. The difference between them is not, he says, that Time has a beginning and an end whereas Eternity has neither, though he admits that each of the particular objects existing in Time began and will end. (Summa, Pars I. Q. x. Art. iv.) But this is, he says, not essential to the nature of time: it is only per accidens (ibid. Art. v.). Cf. Aristotle’s distinction between “unlimited Time” and limited Time. 463 He alludes to Angels and the perfected souls of men and to their celestial abode. 464 St. Thomas speaks of aevum as standing between Eternity and Time and participating in both. Time, he says, consists in succession, Aevum does not but is capable of it, Eternity does not and is incapable of it (Summa, Pars I. Q. x. Art. v.). Thus the heavenly bodies, he says, are changeless in essence, but capable of motion from place to place; and the angels are changeless in nature, but capable of choice and so of spiritual movement. Maximus’s note on the present passage explains this to be D.‘s meaning. There is in each one of us a timeless self. It is spoken of by ail the Christian Mystics as the root of our being, or as the spark, or the Synteresis, etc. Our perfection consists in this ultimate reality, which is each man’s self, shining through his whole being and transforming it. Hence man is at last lifted on to the eternal plane from that of time. The movements of his spirit will then be so intense that they will attain a totum simul . We get a foretaste of this when, in the experience of deep spiritual joy, the successive parts of Time so coalesce (as it were) that an hour seems like a moment. Eternity is Rest and Time is Motion. Accelerate the motion in the individual soul, through the intensification of that soul’s bliss to infinity. There is now in the soul an infinite motion. But Infinite Motion is above succession, and therefore is itself a form of repose. Thus Motion has been changed into Rest, Time into Eternity. Mechanical Time, or dead Time (of which Aristotle speaks as mere movement or succession) is the Time measured by the clock; developing or living Time (which is Plato’s “incomplete life”) is real Time, and this is Aevum , which partakes both of mechanical Time and of Eternity. The best treatment of the subject is probably to be found in Bergson’s theory of durée . (Cf. Von Hügel’s Eternal Life .) The words “eternal,” “everlasting,” etc., being loosely employed, may refer to three different things: (1) endless mechanical Time, i. e. mere endless succession; (2 ) Aevum , or developing and finally perfected living Time; (3) True Timeless Eternity. 465 Vide pp. 169 n. 1, 170 n. 1. 466 Vide p. 170, n. 2.