Select Works of Plotinus · 51 of 752 · tr. Thomas Taylor
Select Works, Section 57
Section 7 7. But if we are to consider only the present and may not call in the past to make the total, why do we not reckon so in the case of time itself, where, in fact, we do not hesitate to add the past to the present and call the total greater? Why not suppose a quantity of happiness equivalent to a quantity of time? This would be no more than taking it lap by lap to correspond with time-laps instead of choosing to consider it as an indivisible, measurable only by the content of a given instant. There is no absurdity in taking count of time which has ceased to be: we are merely counting what is past and finished, as we might count the dead: but to treat past happiness as actually existent and as outweighing present happiness, that is an absurdity. For Happiness must be an achieved and existent state, whereas any time over and apart from the present is nonexistent: all progress of time means the extinction of all the time that has been. Hence time is aptly described as a mimic of eternity that seeks to break up in its fragmentary flight the permanence of its exemplar. Thus whatever time seizes and seals to itself of what stands permanent in eternity is annihilated- saved only in so far as in some degree it still belongs to eternity, but wholly destroyed if it be unreservedly absorbed into time. If Happiness demands the possession of the good of life, it clearly has to do with the life of Authentic-Existence for that life is the Best. Now the life of Authentic-Existence is measurable not by time but by eternity; and eternity is not a more or a less or a thing of any magnitude but is the unchangeable, the indivisible, is timeless Being. We must not muddle together Being and Non-Being, time and eternity, not even everlasting time with the eternal; we cannot make laps and stages of an absolute unity; all must be taken together, wheresoever and howsoever we handle it; and it must be taken at that, not even as an undivided block of time but as the Life of Eternity, a stretch not made up of periods but completely rounded, outside of all notion of time.
The doctrine that God has no parts, divisions, or composite attributes; pure undivided being.
[auto] The passage centrally defines eternity and authentic existence as 'indivisible,' 'unchangeable,' and an 'absolute unity' without parts or magnitude.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
The distinction between the 'Life of Authentic-Existence' and temporal existence implies an ontological hierarchy of being.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
Time is described as a 'mimic' that annihilates permanence, suggesting lower reality is a deficiency or lack of true eternal being.
The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.
The text emphasizes that the eternal life must be taken together as a 'completely rounded' whole and an 'absolute unity' rather than fragmented stages.