Chapter 23: ETERNITY

INTRODUCTION

THE notion of eternity, like that of infinity, has two meanings. One meaning may refer to something positive, yet both seem to be formulated by the human mind in a negative way. We grasp one meaning of eternity by saying that there is no beginning or end to time’s process. The other sense of eternity we conceive by denying time itself and, with it, change or mutability.

Considering eternity as infinite duration, Locke says that we form this notion “by the same means and from the same original that we come to have the idea of time… viz., having got the idea of succession and duration … we can in our thoughts add such lengths of duration to one another, as often as we please, and apply them, so added, to durations past or to come. And this we can continue to do, without bounds or limits, and proceed in infinitum.”

The unimaginability of the infinite is no different in the sphere of time than in that of space or number. The difficulty, Locke points out, is the same in all three cases. “The idea of so much is positive and clear. The idea of greater is also clear.” But these do not yet give us the idea of the infinite. That only comes with “the idea of so much greater as cannot be comprehended, and this is plainly negative, not positive … What lies beyond our positive idea towards infinity,” Locke continues, “lies in obscurity, and has the indeterminate confusion of a negative idea, wherein I know I neither do nor can comprehend all I would, it being too large for a finite and narrow capacity.”

In insisting that we can have no positive idea of infinity—whether of space, time, or number—Locke’s point seems to be that it is beyond our finite capacity to form an image of an infinite object. But though our imaginations may be limited in this way, we do seem able to construct—in a negative manner—conceptions that go beyond experience, and have some meaning even if they lack imaginative content. Locke indicates this other aspect of the matter when he criticizes those who assert dogmatically that “the world is neither eternal nor infinite.” It seems to him that the world’s eternity or the world’s infinity is “at least as conceivable as the contrary.”

It may not be inconsistent, therefore, to say that infinite time, while unimaginable, remains quite conceivable; for to say that eternity is conceivable is simply to say that endless time is neither more nor less possible than time with a beginning and an end. The first conception is as meaningful as the second. It is in fact formed from the second by negation—by substituting the word “without” for “with” with respect to “a beginning and an end.” But unlike our conceptions, our images cannot be formed by negation. When we imagine, as when we perceive, the object before us is positive and definite. We cannot imagine, as we cannot experience, a duration, or a span of time, without a beginning and an end.

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WITH REGARD to the other traditional meaning of “eternity,” Locke takes a different position. It too might be defended as a negative conception, so far as human comprehension is concerned, since it involves the denial of time itself, i.e., of a duration comprising a succession of moments. But here Locke says that there is “nothing more inconceivable to me than duration without succession…. If our weak apprehensions,” he continues, “cannot separate succession from any duration whatsoever, our idea of eternity can be nothing but of an infinite succession of moments of duration, wherein anything does exist.”

Nevertheless, Locke affirms that “we can easily conceive in God infinite duration, and we cannot avoid doing so.” Whether he means by this that God’s eternity involves temporal succession, must be determined by an interpretation of the passage in which he maintains that “God’s infinite duration being accompanied with infinite knowledge and infinite power, he sees all things past and to come; and they are no more distant from his knowledge, no farther removed from his sight, than the present; they all lie under the same view.”

If this passage means that time stands still for God in a single moment in which all things are co-present, then Locke may not be as resolute as Hobbes in rejecting the theologian’s conception of God’s eternity. Criticizing the Scholastics, Hobbes says that “for the meaning of Eternity, they will not have it be an endless succession of time.” Instead, “they will teach us that eternity is the standing still of the present time, a Nunc-stans (as the Schools call it).” This, Hobbes thinks, “neither they nor anyone else understands, no more than they would a Hic-stans for an infinite greatness of place.”

A theologian like Aquinas tries to avoid the difficulty which Hobbes finds in this conception by distinguishing between the now of eternity and the now of time. “The now of time is the same,” he writes, “as regards its subject in the whole course of time, but it differs in aspect.” Furthermore, “the flow of the now, as altering in aspect, is time. But eternity remains the same according to both subject and aspect; and hence eternity is not the same as the now of time.”

The notion of the eternal as the timeless and the immutable does not belong exclusively to Christian theology. In the tradition of the great books it is found, for example, in Plato and Plotinus. Eternity, according to Plotinus, is “a Life changelessly motionless and ever holding the Universal content 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 so conceived is perhaps even more unimaginable than the eternity which is infinite time. We may feel that we have some sense of an infinite duration when we talk, as Ivan does in The Brothers Karamazov, about a billion years or “a quadrillion of a quadrillion raised to the quadrillionth power.” Infinite time is like that, only longer. But because all our experience is temporal through and through, it is more difficult to get any sense of that which is both absolutely timeless and endlessly enduring.

Poets, and sometimes philosophers turned poets, have struggled to give this concept imaginative content by contrasting “the white radiance of eternity” with a “many-colored glass,” or by speaking of time itself as “the moving image of eternity.” When Dimmler in War and Peace tells Natasha that “it is hard for us to imagine eternity,” she replies that it does not seem hard to her—that eternity “is now today, and it will be tomorrow, and always, and was there yesterday and the day before….”

These and similar attempts may not succeed as much as the insight that if we could hold the present moment still, or fix the fleeting instant, we could draw an experience of the eternal from the heart of time. “The now that stands still,” Aquinas writes, “is said to make eternity according to our apprehension. For just as the apprehension of time is caused in us by the fact that we apprehend the flow of the now, so the apprehension of eternity is caused in us by our apprehending the now standing still.”

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TO UNDERSTAND the opposed views that constitute the major issues with regard to eternity, it is necessary to hold quite separate the two meanings of the word which have run side by side in the tradition of western thought. The first of these two senses, signifying interminable time, is the meaning of “eternity” which has greatest currency in popular speech. This is the meaning which appears in the chapters on INFINITY and TIME. It is also the sense in which philosophers and theologians debate the problem of the eternity of the world—whether the world ever began or will ever end.

Since that which exists interminably is imperishable, the word “eternal” is also applied to substances which are thought to be everlasting. Thus Ptolemy, and the ancients generally, think of the heavenly bodies as “beings which are sensible and both moving and moved, but eternal and impassible.” Aristotle calls the heavenly bodies “eternal and incorruptible.” For Lucretius and the atomists, the atoms and the atoms alone are eternal. They are, he says, “everlasting, though all things else are dissolved.” Unless they were eternal, “all things before this would have utterly returned to nothing.” If the atomic particles “were to wear away, or break in pieces,” Newton argues, “the nature of things depending on them, would be changed…. And therefore, that nature may be lasting, the changes of corporeal things are to be placed only in the various separations and new associations and motions of these permanent particles.”

The heavenly bodies and the atoms may be thought everlasting, but they are not immutable in all respects, for local motion is of their very essence. Imperishable in existence, they are also endlessly in motion. In Aristotle’s view, local motion can be perpetual or eternal only if it is circular. Circular motion alone has neither beginning nor end.

The eternal circular motion of the heavens, according to Aristotle, in turn communicates an eternal cyclical movement to the rest of reality. “Since the sun revolves thus, the seasons in consequence come-to-be in a cycle…. and since they come-to-be cyclically, so in their turn do the things whose coming-to-be the seasons initiate.” Such an eternal return, it would seem, is also applied by Aristotle to human things, for he writes that “probably each art and each science has often been developed as far as possible and has again perished.”

SINCE THE HEAVENS and the atoms are in motion, even though their motion is everlasting or eternal, they cannot be eternal in the second meaning of “eternity,” which is the very opposite of the first, not a variation or extension of it. In this meaning, the eternal is an existence absolutely immutable—a being which neither comes to be nor passes away, nor changes, nor moves in any respect whatsoever. Aquinas uses the word in this sense when he says that “the nature of eternity” consists in “the uniformity of what is absolutely outside of movement.”

He also includes in this meaning of “eternity” the notion of interminability; for, he writes, “as whatever is wholly immutable can have no succession, so it has no beginning, and no end.” Yet Aquinas preserves the sharp distinction between the two meanings when he differentiates the sense in which the world might be called eternal and the sense in which he would attribute eternity to God alone. “Even supposing that the world always was, it would not be equal to God in eternity,” he writes; for “the divine being is all being simultaneously without succession, but with the world it is otherwise.”

The conception of eternity as absolutely immutable existence is found in the ancient pagan writers. Plotinus, as we have already seen, makes immutability the mark of eternity. The unmoved prime mover of Aristotle and the Platonic Ideas or Forms also possess this characteristic. But it is the Jewish and Christian theologians who make eternity in this sense one of the prime attributes of God.

Augustine, for example, invokes God as “that everfixed Eternity” in whom “nothing passeth, but the whole is present.” Since time is for him inconceivable apart from change or motion, that which exists immutably does not exist in time. Referring to God’s eternity, he says, “Compare it with the times which are never fixed, and see that it cannot be compared…. Thy years neither come nor go; whereas ours both come and go, that they all may come…. Thy years are one day; and Thy day is not daily, but To-day…. Thy To-day is Eternity.”

Time and eternity are here conceived as two distinct orders of reality. The temporal order is the order of things in change or motion, the eternal the realm of the fixed or permanent, the immobile and immutable. “As eternity is the proper measure of being,” Aquinas writes, “so time is the proper measure of movement.”

The eternal and the temporal are similarly distinguished by Plato in terms of the realms of being and becoming—“the world of immutable being” and “the world of generation.” In the one we find “the parts of time, and the past and the future,” which do not apply to the other. “We unconsciously but wrongly transfer them,” Plato declares, “to the eternal essence…

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…but the truth is that ‘is’ alone is properly attributed to it, and ‘was’ and ‘will be’ are only to be spoken of becoming in time, for they are motions, but that which is immovably the same cannot become older or younger by time … nor is it subject at all to any of those states which affect moving and sensible things of which generation is the cause.”

For Spinoza, the distinction consists in two ways of viewing the order of nature. “Things are conceived by us as actual in two ways,” he writes; “either in so far as we conceive them to exist with relation to a fixed time and place, or in so far as we conceive them to be contained in God, and to follow from the necessity of the divine nature.” Only in the second way do “we conceive things under the form of eternity.” We can view things under the aspect of eternity only insofar as we know God and, through knowing God, are able to know all things according as “their ideas involve the eternal and infinite essence of God.”

The separation of time and eternity into distinct spheres of reality, or even into distinct ways of conceiving the whole of being, is challenged by thinkers who find the eternal within the process of time. For both Jew and Christian, the eternal God intervenes directly in the temporal order. The most radical form which this fusion takes is perhaps exemplified in the doctrine of the Incarnation of Christ, when “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”

Whitehead challenges the sharpness of the separation from another point of view. He not only makes “eternal objects” ingredients in actual occasions or temporal events; but since the events which constitute the process of change are themselves unchangeable, they are for him eternal—even though they have their being within the sphere of change.

A similar point seems to be made in Aristotle’s theory of change. When change is conceived as consisting in a transformation of matter, it is the thing composed of matter and form which changes, and neither the matter nor the form. Matter as matter, Aristotle writes, “does not cease to be in its own nature, but is necessarily outside the sphere of becoming and ceasing to be.” The remark would seem to hold true as well of the form as form.

As indicated in the chapter on CHANGE, the Aristotelian analysis of motion finds in matter or the substratum of change, and in the contrary forms from which and to which a motion takes place, the elements of permanence underlying change. When a green leaf turns red, for instance, green has not changed into red; the leaf has changed from one color to another. The changing leaf is not eternal, but red and green are, since they are incapable of change. This is the sense of eternity in which the unchanging instant is eternal, or the past is eternal, even though both are somehow elements or aspects of time and the process of change.

The past may be eternal but it no longer exists. The passing moment may be eternal, but it has no duration. Lack of existence and lack of duration together distinguish that meaning of “eternal” in which it merely signifies the unchanging, from the meaning in which it signifies that which exists or endures forever without changing. It is only in the second of these two meanings that the eternal can be conceived as that which exists entirely outside the realm of time.

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AS WE HAVE ALREADY observed, the basic philosophical and theological issues concerning eternity cannot be intelligibly stated unless these meanings of “eternity” and “the eternal” are kept distinct.

The traditional problem of the eternity of the world asks, for example, not whether the order of nature is free from change or succession, but whether the changing physical universe ever had a beginning or ever will end. As indicated in the chapters on CHANGE, TIME, and WORLD, it is a question of the infinity of time; or, in another formulation, a question of the interminability of change or motion.

Aristotle appears to answer these questions affirmatively, especially in the last book of his Physics where he claims to demonstrate the impossibility of there having been a beginning to motion. Aquinas, on the other hand, does not think that the eternity of the world can be demonstrated; and of Aristotle’s arguments he says that they are not “absolutely demonstrative, but only relatively so—viz., as against the arguments of some of the ancients who asserted that the world began to be in some actually impossible ways.” In support of this contention, he cites a remark made by Aristotle in the Topics, that among “dialectical problems which we cannot solve demonstratively,” one is “whether the world is eternal.”

For Kant the problem is typically dialectical. It occurs as part of the first antinomy in the Transcendental Dialectic, the thesis of which asserts that “the world has a beginning in time” and the antithesis that “the world has no beginning, but is infinite in respect both to time and space.” The fact that apparently cogent arguments can be marshalled for both of these contradictory propositions shows, in Kant’s opinion, that the reasoning on either side is not demonstrative, but only dialectical and, as he says, “illusory.”

The Jewish and Christian doctrine of the world’s creation by God might seem to require the denial of the world’s eternity. But in fact the theologians find either alternative compatible with divine creation, which they conceive as the cause of the world’s being, not necessarily of its beginning. Augustine, for example, examines the sense in which the world is held by some to be co-eternal with God, even though made or created by God. “It is as if a foot,” he interprets them to say, “had been always from eternity in the dust; there would always have been a print underneath it; and yet no one would doubt that this print was made by the pressure of the foot, and that, though the one was made by the other, neither was prior to the other.” So, he goes on, it might also be said that the world has always existed and yet is always, throughout eternity, created, i.e., caused to exist, by God.

Commenting on this passage, Aquinas adds the observation that if an “action is instantaneous and not successive, it is not necessary for the maker to be prior in duration to the thing made.” Hence it does not follow necessarily, he writes, “that if God is the active cause of the world, He must be prior to the world in duration; because creation, by which He produced the world, is not a successive change” but an instantaneous act.

Writing both as a philosopher and as a theologian, Maimonides—many centuries before Kant stated his antinomy—thinks he is able to show that the question of infinite time and endless motion “cannot be decided by proof, neither in the affirmative nor in the negative.” Just as for Augustine and Aquinas, so for him it is indifferent—from a philosophical point of view—whether the created world and its Creator are co-eternal or whether, as Genesis says, “in the beginning God created heaven and earth.”

But both alternatives are not equally acceptable to the theologian. Since there is no proof on either side “sufficient to convince us,” Maimonides writes, “we take the text of the Bible literally, and say that it teaches us a truth which we cannot prove”—namely, that the world had a beginning in time. Aquinas comes to the same conclusion. “That the world did not always exist,” he writes, “we hold by faith alone.” It is not “an object… of demonstration or science.” For Christian and Jew alike, the religious dogma that the world is not only created by God, in the sense of depending for its existence upon God as cause, but was also initiated by God, or caused to begin to exist and move, is based on the revealed word of God in Holy Writ.

Those who, on philosophical grounds, deny creation ex nihilo also deny the world’s beginning. Pursuant to his theory of the world as a necessary and perpetual emanation from the One, Plotinus, for example, declares that “the Kosmos has had no beginning … and this is warrant for its continued existence. Why should there be in the future a change that has not yet occurred?” For Spinoza likewise, “all things which follow from the absolute nature of any attribute of God must for ever exist”; and to this extent at least, the world is eternal and uncreated.

The man of faith, however, believes in a God who is free to create or not to create, not one from whom the world emanates as a necessary effect from its source. When, therefore, he affirms that God freely chose to produce the world out of nothing, he seems to meet the question, “What was God doing before He made heaven and earth?” To the questioner Augustine does not wish to give “the jesting answer—said to have been given by one who sought to evade the force of the question—‘He was getting Hell ready for people who pry too deep.’ ”

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Instead he points out that the question itself is illicit for it assumes a time before time began. “If before heaven and earth were made,” he writes, “there was no time, then what is meant by the question ‘What were You doing then?’ If there was not any time, there was not any ‘then.’ ” In the phrase “before creation” the word “before” has no temporal significance. It signifies a different kind of priority—the sense in which eternity precedes time, the sense in which Augustine says of God that “it is not in time that You are before all time…. You are before all the past by the eminence of Your ever-present eternity.”

TURNING FROM eternity in the sense of infinite time to the eternal in the sense of the timeless and unchanging, the great question is whether anything eternal exists. The atoms of Lucretius are not eternal in this sense, nor are the supposedly imperishable heavenly bodies. Nor is it sufficient to point out that change itself involves aspects or elements of permanence; for the question, strictly interpreted, asks whether anything exists in and of itself which, having no beginning or end, also has no past, present, or future—no temporal phases in its continued endurance. Only such a thing would be utterly non-temporal or changeless.

Since nothing made of matter is exempt from motion, it is generally supposed that no material thing is eternal in this sense. Not even God is eternal unless God is absolutely immutable as well as spiritual. The angels are spiritual beings, yet, according to Christian theology, they cannot be called “eternal” because, in the first place, they are creatures and had an origin; and, in the second place, they are subject to spiritual change even if they are not involved in the sorts of motion to which bodies are susceptible. The theologians, therefore, use the word “aeviternal” to signify the mode of angelic existence in that it is “a mean between eternity and time.” Aeviternity, Aquinas explains, has “a beginning but no end,” while “eternity has neither beginning nor end … and time both beginning and end.”

THE QUESTION about the eternal as timeless and immutable existence has two parts: Does an immutable God exist? Does anything else exist which is immutable?

To the first question, it does not suffice to reply by affirming the existence of God. Some modern theologians deny God’s absolute immutability, and so deny the eternality of His being in the precise sense under consideration.

With regard to the second question, we must observe that, in the tradition of the great books, eternality has been claimed for two things other than God, namely, for truth and ideas. Whatever “is produced by reasoning aright,” Hobbes says, is “general, eternal, and immutable truth.” On somewhat different grounds James declares, “there is no denying the fact that the mind is filled with necessary and eternal relations which it finds between certain of its ideal conceptions, and which form a determinate system, independent of the order of frequency in which experience may have associated the conception’s originals in time and space.” He quotes Locke to the effect that “truths belonging to the essences of things… are eternal, and are to be found out only by the contemplation of those essences.”

The common phrase—“the eternal verities”—which James uses testifies to the prevalence of the notion that truth itself cannot change, and that when men speak of a new truth or the growth of truth, the change they refer to is only a change of mind with respect to what men think is true or false, not a change in the truth itself. Whatever is true now, always was true and always will be. Time and change make no difference to the truth of two plus two equals four.

But even so it can still be asked how the truth exists, for the attribution of eternity to anything also requires us to consider its mode of being. If, for example, the truth exists only in the mind, then it exists unchangingly only in the mind of an absolutely infallible knower, a mind which neither learns nor forgets, nor changes in any respect with regard to what it knows. If God is such a knower, eternal truth can have existence in God’s mind.

The theologians sometimes go further and identify absolute truth, as they identify absolute goodness, with God. Aquinas writes, for example, that “if we speak of truth as it is in things, then all things are true by one primary truth; to which each one is assimilated according to its entity, and thus, although the essences or forms of things are many, yet the truth of the divine intellect is one, in conformity to which all things are said to be true.” In this view, it would appear that there are not two eternal beings, but only one.

William James finds immutability not only in the truth, but also in the concepts of the human mind. “Each conception,” he writes, “eternally remains what it is, and never can become another. The mind may change its states, and its meanings, at different times; may drop one conception and take up another, but the dropped conception can in no intelligible sense be said to change into its successor…. Thus, amid the flux of opinions and of physical things, the world of conceptions, or things intended to be thought about, stands stiff and immutable, like Plato’s Realm of Ideas.”

In the case of ideas, however, the problem is complicated by the question whether ideas exist in and by themselves, outside the mind of God or man. If, according to a doctrine attributed to Plato and the Platonists, the Ideas or Forms exist separately, then they constitute a realm of eternal beings, for their immutability is unquestionable. If, from an opposite point of view, the realm of unchanging ideas is identical with the divine intellect, then no eternal being or beings exist apart from God.

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THE PROPOSITION that God is the only eternal being, the only uncreated and immutable existence, is inextricably connected with the proposition that He is the only actually infinite being, the ens realissimum having all perfections. “Eternity is the very essence of God,” Spinoza writes, “in so far as that essence involves necessary existence.” In saying this he appeals to his definition of eternity, by which we are to understand “existence itself, so far as it is conceived necessarily to follow from the definition alone of the eternal thing.” For Spinoza, as well as for Aquinas, the same fact which makes God eternal—namely, the identity of his essence and existence—also constitutes his infinity and uniqueness. It is impossible, Spinoza argues, for there to be two infinite substances. For the same reason, there cannot be two eternal beings.

As indicated in the chapter on INFINITY, when the word “infinite” is applied to God, the theologians give it a positive rather than a negative significance. They mean by it the actual infinity of perfect being and absolute power, in sharp distinction from the potential infinity by which the mathematicians signify the lack of a limit in addition or division.

These two meanings of “infinity” seem to parallel the two meanings of “eternity” which we have dealt with throughout this chapter—one the negative sense in which it means the lack of a beginning or an end to time, the other the positive sense in which God’s eternity consists in that fullness of being which can exist apart from time and change. Because our intellects are finite, we may apprehend eternal being in a negative manner by calling it ‘timeless’ or by conceiving it as infinite duration, but Spinoza cautions us against supposing that it can be “explained by duration or time, even if the duration be conceived without beginning or end.”

One other theological discussion raises issues which involve in a unique way the two meanings of eternity. It deals with the revealed doctrine of perdition and salvation as eternal death and eternal life. Is the eternality of Hell and Heaven equivalent to a period of endless duration or does it mean—more fundamentally—the unchanging state of souls after the Last Judgment?

According to Augustine and Aquinas, the eternity of Heaven and Hell means the moral immutability of the immortal soul as well as the interminability of the beatitude it enjoys or the punishment it suffers. Only in Purgatory does a change of moral state occur, but the process of purification which takes place there is always limited in period. Purgatory is, therefore, not eternal in either sense.

As Kant sees it, however, the after-life must not only be interminable, or of infinite duration, but it must also permit a progressive moral development without end. Man is justified, according to Kant, “in hoping for an endless duration of his existence” only on the ground that “the holiness which the Christian law requires … leaves the creature nothing but a progress in infinitum.” From still another point of view, Dr. Johnson questions the traditional Christian dogma that the souls of the blessed are secure in a perpetual state of rectitude—in this respect like the good angels who are confirmed in their goodness from the first instant of creation.

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Boswell had “ventured to ask him whether, although the words of some texts of Scripture seemed strong in support of the dreadful doctrine of an eternity of punishment, we might not hope that the denunciation was figurative, and would not be literally executed.” To this, Dr. Johnson replied: “Sir, you are to consider the intention of punishment in a future state. We have no reason to be sure that we shall then be no longer able to offend against God. We do not know that even the angels are quite in a state of security…. It may, therefore, perhaps be necessary, in order to preserve both men and angels in a state of rectitude, that they should have continually before them the punishment of those who have deviated from it.”

On Dr. Johnson’s theory, the moral condition of the damned seems to be immutable. It is irremediable even by the punishments which, according to him, may exercise some deterrent effect upon the blessed who, he seems to think, are not as unalterably set in the path of righteousness as the wicked are in their iniquity.

On any of these conceptions of Heaven and Hell, and of the state of the soul in the after-life, the meaning of “eternity” is somewhat altered; for eternal life or eternal death is conceived as having a beginning, if not an end, for the individual soul. As in the case of all fundamental religious dogmas, the truth asserted remains obscure and mysterious. It is not only beyond imagination, but also beyond any adequate rational conception, analysis, or demonstration.

OUTLINE OF TOPICS

Eternity as timelessness and immutability or as endless and infinite time: the distinction between eternity and time
- 1a. The priority of eternity to time
- 1b. Aeviternity as intermediate between eternity and time
The issue concerning the infinity of time and the eternity of the world or of motion
The eternity of God
The things which partake of eternity
- 4a. The imperishability of angels, spiritual substances, souls
- 4b. The imperishable in the physical order: matter, atoms, celestial bodies
- 4c. The immutability of truth and ideas
- 4d. The eternity of Heaven and Hell: everlasting life and death
The knowledge and imagery of eternity

REFERENCES

To find the passages cited, use the numbers in heavy type, which are the volume and page numbers of the passages referred to. For example, in 4 Homer: Iliad, BK I [265-283] 12d, the number 4 is the number of the volume in the set; the number 12d indicates that the passage is in section d of page 12.

Page Sections: When the text is printed in one column, the letters a and b refer to the upper and lower halves of the page. For example, in 53 James: Psychology, 116a-119b, the passage begins in the upper half of page 116 and ends in the lower half of page 119. When the text is printed in two columns, the letters a and b refer to the upper and lower halves of the left-hand side of the page, the letters c and d to the upper and lower halves of the right-hand side of the page. For example, in 7 PLATO: Symposium, 163b-164c, the passage begins in the lower half of the left-hand side of page 163 and ends in the upper half of the right-hand side of page 164.

Author’s Divisions: One or more of the main divisions of a work (such as PART, BK, CH, SECT) are sometimes included in the reference; line numbers, in brackets, are given in certain cases; e.g., Iliad, BK I [265-283] 12d.

Bible References: The references are to book, chapter, and verse. When the King James and Douay versions differ in title of books or in the numbering of chapters or verses, the King James version is cited first and the Douay, indicated by a (D), follows; e.g., OLD TESTAMENT: Nehemiah, 7:45—(D) II Esdras, 7:46.

Symbols: The abbreviation “esp” calls the reader’s attention to one or more especially relevant parts of a whole reference; “passim” signifies that the topic is discussed intermittently rather than continuously in the work or passage cited.

For additional information concerning the style of the references, see the Explanation of Reference Style; for general guidance in the use of The Great Ideas, consult the Preface.

1. Eternity as timelessness and immutability or as endless and infinite time: the distinction between eternity and time

APOCRYPHA: Ecclesiasticus, 18:10—(D) OT, Ecclesiasticus, 18:8
7 PLATO: Timaeus, 450b-451d
8 ARISTOTLE: Interpretation, CH 13 [23b18-26] 35b-c / Physics, BK IV, CH 12 [221b19]-CH 13 [222b29] 301a-302c; BK VI, CH 2 [233a13-16] 315a-c; CH 7 [237b23-238a19] 321a-c; CH 10 [241b11-20] 325d; BK VIII, CH 1-2 334a-337b; CH 6 344b-346b; CH 8 348b-352a / Heavens, BK I, CH 12 372d-375d esp [282b22-283a2] 373d-374c, [283b7-22] 375c-d; BK II, CH 3 [286a8-13] 377c / Generation and Corruption, BK II, CH 9 [335a33-b2] 436d-437a / Metaphysics, BK V, CH 5 [1015b9-16] 536a; BK IX, CH 8 [1050b6-20] 576b-c; BK XI, CH 10 [1067a33-38] 596a; BK XII, CH 6 [1071b2-11] 601b; CH 7 [1072a18-23] 602a-b; [1073a3-11] 603a-b; BK XIV, CH 2 [1088b14-28] 620d-621a
12 AURELIUS: Meditations, BK VI, SECT 15, 275a-b
17 PLOTINUS: First Ennead, TR V, CH 7 20a-c / Third Ennead, TR VII 119b-129a / Fourth Ennead, TR IV, CH 6-8 161b-162d; CH 15-16 165c-166b
18 AUGUSTINE: Confessions, BK VII, PAR 21 49d-50a; BK XI 89b-99b esp PAR 8-17 91b-93c, PAR 39-41 98c-99b; BK XII, PAR 13-20 102a-103d, PAR 40 109b-110a; BK XIII, PAR 44 122d / City of God, BK XI, CH 5-6 324d-325d; CH 21 333a-d; BK XII, CH 12-19 349b-355a
19 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I, Q 10, AA 1-5 40d-45c esp A 4 43b-44b; Q 14, A 9, ANS 83b-d; A 13, ANS and REP 3 86d-88c; Q 42, A 2, REP 2-4 225d-227a; Q 46, A 2, REP 5 253a-255a; Q 79, A 8, REP 2 421c-422b
21 DANTE: Divine Comedy, PURGATORY, XI [106-108] 69d; PARADISE, XXIX [10-45] 150b-c
23 HOBBES: Leviathan, PART IV, 271b
25 MONTAIGNE: Essays, 292d-294a
29 CERVANTES: Don Quixote, PART II, 366d-367a
30 BACON: Novum Organum, BK I, APH 48, 110d
31 DESCARTES: Objections and Replies, 216d-217c
31 SPINOZA: Ethics, PART I, DEF 8 355c; PROP 20, COROL 2 364a; PART II, PROP 44, COROL 2 and DEMONST 390a; PART V, PROP 23 458b-d; PROP 29, DEMONST 459c; PROP 34, SCHOL 460d
32 MILTON: On Time 12a-b / Paradise Lost, BK XII [553-556] 331a
33 PASCAL: Pensées, 121 195a; 205-206 211a
35 LOCKE: Human Understanding, BK II, CH XIV, SECT 26-27 160c-161a; SECT 30-31 161c-162a; CH XV, SECT 3-8 162d-164b; SECT 11-12 165a-c;

(1. Eternity as timelessness… continued)

CH XVII 167d-174a passim, esp SECT 5 168d-169a, SECT 10 170b-c, SECT 16 172a-b; CH XXIX, SECT 15 237a

42 KANT: Pure Reason, 26d; 130b-133c; 135a-137a,c; 152c; 160b-161d; 185a-b
46 HEGEL: Philosophy of History, INTRO, 206c
51 TOLSTOY: War and Peace, BK VII, 295b-c; EPILOGUE II, 681a

1a. The priority of eternity to time

7 PLATO: Timaeus, 450c-451a
8 ARISTOTLE: Metaphysics, BK IX, CH 8 [1050b2-28] 576b-d
17 PLOTINUS: Third Ennead, TR VII, CH 1 119b-c; CH 6, 122c-d; CH 11, 126a; CH 13, 128c / Fourth Ennead, TR IV, CH 15-16 165c-166b
18 AUGUSTINE: Confessions, BK VII, PAR 21 49d-50a; BK XI, PAR 12-16 92b-93a; BK XII, PAR 40 109b-110a / City of God, BK XI, CH 4-6 324a-325d; BK XII, CH 12 349b-350a; CH 15-17 351b-354a
19 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I, Q 22, A 1, REP 2 127d-128d; Q 46 250a-255d; Q 61, A 2 315c-316a
21 DANTE: Divine Comedy, PARADISE, XXIX [10-45] 150b-c
32 MILTON: Paradise Lost, BK V [577-599] 187b-188a; BK VII [70-108] 218b-219b
42 KANT: Pure Reason, 135a-137a,c; 160b-161d esp 161d

1b. Aeviternity as intermediate between eternity and time

18 AUGUSTINE: Confessions, BK XII, PAR 9 101b-c; PAR 12-15 101d-102c; PAR 18-22, 103b-104a / City of God, BK XII, CH 15 351b-352d
19 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I, Q 10, A 2, REP 1-2 41d-42c; A 3, ANS 42c-43b; AA 5-6 44b-46d

2. The issue concerning the infinity of time and the eternity of the world or of motion

OLD TESTAMENT: Genesis, 1:1-2 / Nehemiah, 9:6—(D) II Esdras, 9:6 / Job, 38:1-13 / Psalms, 90:2; 95:4-5; 102:25-26; 104:5-6; 119:90-91; 136:5-9; 148:1-6—(D) Psalms, 89:2; 94:4-5; 101:26-27; 103:5-6; 118:90-91; 135:5-9; 148:1-6 / Proverbs, 3:19; 8:22-29 / Isaiah, 45:12,18; 48:13; 65:17-25—(D) Isaias, 45:12,18; 48:13; 65:17-25 / Jeremiah, 51:15—(D) Jeremias, 51:15
APOCRYPHA: Wisdom of Solomon, 7:17-18—(D) OT, Book of Wisdom, 7:17-18 / Ecclesiasticus, 23:19-20; 24:9—(D) OT, Ecclesiasticus, 23:28-29; 24:14 / II Maccabees, 7:23—(D) OT, II Machabees, 7:23
NEW TESTAMENT: Matthew, 13:24-30,36-43,49-50; 24:3-35 / Mark, 13:3-33 / Luke, 21:5-33 / John, 1:1-3 / Colossians, 1:16-17 / Hebrews, 1:10-12 / II Peter, 3:3-13 / Revelation, 10:5-6—(D) Apocalypse, 10:5-6
7 PLATO: Phaedrus, 124b-c / Timaeus, 447b-c; 450b-451a
8 ARISTOTLE: Topics, BK I, CH 11 [104b13-18] 148a-b / Physics, BK IV, CH 13 [222a29-b8] 302b; BK VIII, CH 1-2 334a-337b; CH 6 344b-346b; CH 8 348b-352a / Heavens, BK I, CH 2 [269a2-10] 360c-d; CH 3 [270a1-26] 361c-362a; CH 9 [279a12]-CH 12 [283b22] 370b-375d / Generation and Corruption, BK II, CH 10-11 437d-441a,c / Meteorology, BK I, CH 14 [352a16-353a27] 458b-459a,c; BK II, CH 3 [356b2-357a4] 462b-c / Metaphysics, BK IX, CH 8 [1050b20-28] 576c-d; BK XI, CH 6 [1063a13-16] 591b; CH 10 [1067a33-38] 596a; BK XII, CH 6-8 601b-605a esp CH 7 [1072b19-1073a14] 602b-d, [1073a5-11] 603b
9 ARISTOTLE: Motion of Animals, CH 4 [699b14-700a6] 234d-235a; CH 6 [700b29-701a7] 236a-b
12 LUCRETIUS: Nature of Things, BK I [146-264] 2d-4b; [483-634] 7a-8d; [951-1051] 12d-14a; BK II [89-141] 16a-d; [294-307] 18d-19a; [569-580] 22b; [1048-1063] 28b-c; [1105-1174] 29a-30a,c; BK V [1-431] 61a-66d esp [55-70] 61d-62a, [235-246] 64a-b, [351-379] 65c-66a; BK VI [535-607] 87c-88b
12 AURELIUS: Meditations, BK V, SECT 13 271b; BK VI, SECT 15 275a-b; BK IX, SECT 28 293d-294a
16 KEPLER: Epitome, BK IV, 847b-848b
17 PLOTINUS: Second Ennead, TR I 35a-39d esp CH 1-5 35a-37c
18 AUGUSTINE: Confessions, BK XI 89b-99b esp PAR 12-17, 92b-93b, PAR 40 98d-99a / City of God, BK XI, CH 4-6 324a-325d; BK XII, CH 10-20 348b-357a
19 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I, Q 14, A 12, ANS 85d-86d; Q 46 250a-255d esp A 1 250a-252d; Q 61, A 2 315c-316a; Q 66, A 4 348d-349d; Q 75, A 1, REP 1 378b-379c
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART III SUPPL, Q 91, A 2 1017c-1020c
23 HOBBES: Leviathan, PART I, 50a; PART III, 162b
30 BACON: Novum Organum, BK I, APH 48, 110d
31 DESCARTES: Rules, XII, 27b-c / Objections and Replies, 228a-b
32 MILTON: Paradise Lost, BK I [6-10] 93b; BK II [850-1009] 129b-133a esp [890-969] 130b-132a; BK V [577-599] 187b-188a; BK VII [70-108] 218b-219b
33 PASCAL: Pensées, 121 195a
34 NEWTON: Optics, BK III, 540a-541b
35 LOCKE: Human Understanding, BK II, CH XIV, SECT 26 160c-d
42 KANT: Pure Reason, 20a; 26d; 130b-133c esp 130b-131c, 132d-133a; 135a-137a,c; 152a-d; 160b-161d; 239b-c / Practical Reason, 334b-335c esp 335a-b
51 TOLSTOY: War and Peace, EPILOGUE II, 693c-694a passim

3. The eternity of God

OLD TESTAMENT: Exodus, 15:18 / Deuteronomy, 32:39-40 / Psalms, 9:5-8; 29:10-11; 33:10-11; 48 esp 48:8, 48:14; 90 esp 90:1-6; 93; 102:12-28; 103:14-18; 136; 145:10-13; 146:5-10—(D) Psalms, 9:6-9; 28:10; 32:10-11; 47 esp 47:9, 47:15; 89 esp 89:1-6; 92; 101:13-29; 102:14-18; 135; 144:10-13; 145:5-10 / Isaiah, 40:28-29; 43:10-13; 57:15—(D) Isaias, 40:28-29; 43:10-13; 57:15 / Jeremiah, 10:10—(D) Jeremias, 10:10 / Lamentations, 5:19 / Daniel, 6:25-27 / Malachi, 3:6—(D) Malachias, 3:6
APOCRYPHA: Ecclesiasticus, 39:20; 42:21—(D) OT, Ecclesiasticus, 39:25; 42:21-22
NEW TESTAMENT: Matthew, 24:35 / Colossians, 1:16-17 / I Timothy, 1:17 / Hebrews, 1:10-12; 13:7-8 / Revelation, 1:17-18; 10:6—(D) Apocalypse, 1:17-18; 10:6
5 SOPHOCLES: Oedipus at Colonus [607-615] 120a
8 ARISTOTLE: Physics, BK VIII, CH 6 [258b10-259a31] 344b-345d / Heavens, BK II, CH 3 [286a3-13] 377c / Metaphysics, BK V, CH 5 [1015b9-16] 536a; BK IX, CH 8 [1050b6-20] 576b-c; BK XII, CH 1 [1069a30-b2] 598b-c; CH 6-7 601b-603b; CH 9 605a-d esp [1075a5-11] 605c-d; BK XIV, CH 2 [1088b14-28] 620d-621a / Soul, BK II, CH 4 [415a22-b8] 645c-d
16 KEPLER: Harmonies of the World, 1071b
17 PLOTINUS: Third Ennead, TR VII, CH 5 121c-122a / Sixth Ennead, TR VII, CH 11 348b-c
18 AUGUSTINE: Confessions, BK VII, PAR 1-4 43b-44c; PAR 6 44d-45a; PAR 16-18 48c-49b; PAR 21 49d-50a; PAR 23-24 50b-51a; BK XI, PAR 12-16 92b-93a; BK XII, PAR 11 101c-d; PAR 18 103a-c; PAR 40 109b-110a; BK XIII, PAR 44 122d / City of God, BK XI, CH 21 333a-d; BK XII, CH 14-17 350d-354a / Christian Doctrine, BK I, CH 5-6 625d-626b; CH 22 629b-630a
19 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I, Q 10 40d-46d; Q 14, A 9, ANS 83b-d; A 13, ANS and REP 3 86d-88c; Q 18, A 3 106b-107c; Q 22, A 1, REP 2 127d-128d; Q 42, A 2 225d-227a; Q 43, A 2 230d-231c; Q 61, A 2, ANS 315c-316a
21 DANTE: Divine Comedy, PARADISE, VII [64-72] 115d; XII [52-60] 126a; XXIV [130-141] 144a; XXIX [10-45] 150b-c; XXX 156b-157d esp [124-141] 157c-d
22 CHAUCER: Knight’s Tale [2987-3040] 209a-210a
25 MONTAIGNE: Essays, 293d-294a
31 DESCARTES: Discourse, PART IV, 52b-c / Meditations, III, 84a-87a esp 86a; V, 94a-95a esp 95a / Objections and Replies, 228a-b
31 SPINOZA: Ethics, PART I, DEF 1 355a; DEF 3,6 355b; DEF 8 355c; PROP 6-8 356b-357d; PROP 10-11 358a-359b; PROP 19-20 363c-364a; PROP 33, SCHOL 2, 367d-368c; PART II, PROP 44, COROL 2-PROP 47 390a-391a
32 MILTON: Paradise Lost, BK III [1-12] 135b; [372-382] 143b
34 NEWTON: Principles, BK III, GENERAL SCHOL, 370a-371a
35 LOCKE: Human Understanding, BK II, CH XV, SECT 3-4 162d-163b; CH XVII, SECT 16-17 172a-c; SECT 20 172d-173c; BK IV, CH X 349c-354c passim, esp SECT 3-5 349d-350b, SECT 8-11 351a-352a
40 GIBBON: Decline and Fall, 81b-c
42 KANT: Pure Reason, 175d-176c; 190c; 201b-c / Practical Reason, 334b-335c; 344b-c / Judgement, 592a-c
46 HEGEL: Philosophy of History, INTRO, 156d-157b, 206c
51 TOLSTOY: War and Peace, BK XV, 631a-c

4. The things which partake of eternity

4a. The imperishability of angels, spiritual substances, souls

7 PLATO: Phaedrus, 124b-c / Meno, 179d-183a esp 180a / Phaedo, 223c-246c esp 226c-228b, 230c-232c, 245d-246c / Republic, BK X, 434d-436a / Timaeus, 452c-d
8 ARISTOTLE: Interpretation, CH 13 [23b18-26] 35b-c / Metaphysics, BK XII, CH 3 [1070a21-27] 599c; CH 8 603b-605a / Soul, BK II, CH 2 [413b24-29] 643d-644a; BK III, CH 5 [430a20-25] 662d
12 LUCRETIUS: Nature of Things, BK III [417-869] 35c-41a
16 KEPLER: Epitome, BK IV, 890b-891a
17 PLOTINUS: Fourth Ennead, TR IV, CH 6 161b-c; TR VII 191c-200c esp CH 8, 195d-196a, CH 9-15 198b-200c
18 AUGUSTINE: Confessions, BK XII, PAR 9 101b-c; PAR 12 101d-102a; PAR 15-16 102b-103a; PAR 18-22, 103b-104a; PAR 28, 105c / City of God, BK X, CH 31 319b-d; BK XII, CH 15 351b-352d; BK XIII, CH 1 360a-b; CH 10-17 367a-368d
19 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I, Q 10, A 2, REP 1-2 41d-42c; A 3, ANS and REP 1 42c-43b; AA 5-6 44b-46d; Q 50, A 5 274b-275a; Q 61, A 2 315c-316a; Q 75, A 6 383c-384c; Q 104, A 1, ANS and REP 1,3 534c-536c
21 DANTE: Divine Comedy, PARADISE, VII [64-75] 115d-116a; [121-148] 116b-c; XII [52-72] 126a
23 HOBBES: Leviathan, PART III, 192c-193c; PART IV, 250c-251b; 253b-254a
31 DESCARTES: Meditations, 73b-c / Objections and Replies, 127c-d; 216d-217a; 228b
31 SPINOZA: Ethics, PART II, PROP 11 377b-c; PART V, PROP 23 458b-d; PROP 25 458d-459a; PROP 29-33 459b-460c; PROP 38-40 461d-462d
32 MILTON: Paradise Lost, BK I [116-159] 96a-97a; BK II [81-105] 113a-b; BK V [889-892] 194b; BK VI [296-353] 202b-204a; [430-436] 205b; [853-855] 215a
33 PASCAL: Pensées, 194-195, 206b-210b
35 BERKELEY: Human Knowledge, SECT 141, 441a-b
40 GIBBON: Decline and Fall, 186a-b

448

***

(4. The things which partake of eternity. 4a. The imperishability of angels… continued)

42 KANT: Pure Reason, 121a-128b esp 124d-126c; 203d-204c / Practical Reason, 348d
51 TOLSTOY: War and Peace, BK V, 216d-218b; BK VII, 295b-c; BK XIV, 608a-b

4b. The imperishable in the physical order: matter, atoms, celestial bodies

7 PLATO: Timaeus, 450c-451a; 457a-b
8 ARISTOTLE: Physics, BK II, CH 1 [193a9-28] 269b-c / Heavens, BK I, CH 3 360d-362a; BK I, CH 9 [279a12]-BK II, CH 1 [284a6] 370b-376a; BK II, CH 6 379c-380c; BK III, CH 6 396a-c / Generation and Corruption, BK II, CH 10-11 437d-441a,c esp CH 10 [336b25-34] 438d / Metaphysics, BK I, CH 3 [983b7-984a17] 501d-502b; BK III, CH 2 [997b34-998a12] 516a-b; CH 4 [999b1-16] 518b-c; [1000a5-1001a3] 518d-519d; BK IX, CH 8 [1050b16-28] 576c-d; BK XI, CH 2 [1060a3-36] 588a-c; CH 6 [1063a10-16] 591b; BK XII, CH 3 599a-d; CH 6-8 601b-605a / Soul, BK II, CH 4 [415a23-b8] 645c-d
9 ARISTOTLE: Motion of Animals, CH 4 [699b14-700a6] 234d-235a
12 LUCRETIUS: Nature of Things, BK I [146-264] 2d-4b; [483-634] 7a-8d; BK II [294-307] 18d-19a; BK V [110-145] 62c-63a
12 EPICTETUS: Discourses, BK II, CH 13, 188d-189a
12 AURELIUS: Meditations, BK II, SECT 3 257a-b; BK IV, SECT 46 267c; BK VI, SECT 15 275a-b; BK VII, SECT 18 281a; SECT 23 281b; SECT 25 281c; SECT 50 283a; BK X, SECT 7 297b-c
16 PTOLEMY: Almagest, BK I, 5a-6a; BK XIII, 429a-b
16 KEPLER: Epitome, BK IV, 888b-889b; 929b-930b
17 PLOTINUS: Second Ennead, TR I 35a-39d / Fourth Ennead, TR IV, CH 7-8 161d-162d
18 AUGUSTINE: Confessions, BK XII, PAR 8-9 101a-c; PAR 14-16 102b-103a; PAR 22 104a-b; PAR 28, 105c; PAR 40 109b-110a / City of God, BK XIII, CH 17, 367d-368b
19 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I, Q 10, A 2, REP 2 41d-42c; A 3, ANS 42c-43b; A 4, ANS 43b-44b; A 5, ANS 44b-45c; Q 46, A 1, REP 2-3 250a-252d; Q 58, A 3, ANS 301d-302d; Q 63, A 1, REP 2 325c-326c; Q 65, A 1, REP 1 339b-340b; Q 66, A 2 345d-347b; Q 75, A 6, ANS 383c-384c; Q 84, A 1, REP 3 440d-442a; Q 104, A 1, REP 1,3 534c-536c; Q 113, A 1, ANS 576a-d; Q 115, A 3, ANS 588c-589c
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART III SUPPL, Q 77, A 2, ANS and REP 1 945a-946b; Q 91 1016a-1025b
21 DANTE: Divine Comedy, PARADISE, I [64-81] 106d-107a
28 HARVEY: On Animal Generation, 390b-d
30 BACON: Novum Organum, BK II, APH 48, 186b-d
31 SPINOZA: Ethics, PART I, PROP 15, SCHOL 360b-361d
33 PASCAL: Vacuum, 358a
34 NEWTON: Optics, BK III, 541b
35 LOCKE: Human Understanding, BK IV, CH X, SECT 10-19 351b-354c passim
40 GIBBON: Decline and Fall, 346d
41 GIBBON: Decline and Fall, 226b
42 KANT: Pure Reason, 18d-19a; 74b-76c
45 LAVOISIER: Elements of Chemistry, PART I, 41b-c

4c. The immutability of truth and ideas

OLD TESTAMENT: Psalms, 100:5; 117:2-3; 119:160; 146:5-6—(D) Psalms, 99:5; 116:2; 118:160; 145:5-6 / Proverbs, 8:22-30
APOCRYPHA: Wisdom of Solomon, 7:24-26—(D) OT, Book of Wisdom, 7:24-26 / Ecclesiasticus, 24:9—(D) OT, Ecclesiasticus, 24:14
NEW TESTAMENT: II John, 1-2
7 PLATO: Phaedrus, 125a-b / Symposium, 167b-d / Meno, 184d / Phaedo, 231b-232b / Timaeus, 447b-d; 457b-458b
8 ARISTOTLE: Posterior Analytics, BK I, CH 8 104a-b / Metaphysics, BK I, CH 6 [987b29-988a18] 505b-d; BK II, CH 1 [993b19-31] 512a-b; BK III, CH 2 [997b34-998a12] 516a-b; BK IX, CH 10 [1051b33-1052a12] 578a,c
9 ARISTOTLE: Ethics, BK I, CH 6 [1096a29-b5] 341c-d; BK VI, CH 3 [1139b18-24] 388b-c
11 NICOMACHUS: Arithmetic, BK I, 811a-812a; 813d-814a
17 PLOTINUS: Fifth Ennead, TR IX, CH 5-8 248a-250a
18 AUGUSTINE: Confessions, BK I, PAR 9, 3a / Christian Doctrine, BK I, CH 8-10 626c-627b; BK II, CH 38-39, 654b-d
19 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I, Q 10, A 3, REP 3 42c-43b; Q 14, A 13, ANS and REP 3 86d-88c; A 15 89b-90b; Q 16, AA 7-8 99a-100d; Q 18, A 4 107d-108c; Q 22, A 1, REP 2 127d-128d; Q 44, A 3 240b-241a; Q 84, A 1, REP 3 440d-442a; A 2, ANS and REP 3 442b-443c; A 5 446c-447c; Q 86, A 3 463b-d
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 91, A 1 208b-d; Q 93 215b,d-220d; Q 94, A 4, ANS 223d-224d, AA 5-6 224d-226b; PART II-II, Q 1, A 1, CONTRARY 380b-381a
23 HOBBES: Leviathan, PART IV, 267b
25 MONTAIGNE: Essays, 276b-285c passim, esp 279b-282a
30 BACON: Novum Organum, BK I, APH 56 112a
31 DESCARTES: Objections and Replies, 216d-217c; 228a-b; 229c-d
31 SPINOZA: Ethics, PART I, DEF 8 355c; PROP 8, SCHOL 2 356d-357d; PROP 17, SCHOL 362c-363c; PROP 19, SCHOL 363d; PROP 20, COROL 1 364a; PROP 33, SCHOL 2 367d-369a; PART II, PROP 44, COROL 2-PROP 47 390a-391a

449

***

(4. The things which partake of eternity. 4c. The immutability of truth and ideas… continued)

32 MILTON: Paradise Lost, BK II [142-151] 114b
33 PASCAL: Vacuum, 358b
35 LOCKE: Human Understanding, BK IV, CH III, SECT 31 323c-d; CH XI, SECT 14 358b-c
42 KANT: Pure Reason, 113c-118a esp 113c-114b, 117b-118a; 173b-174a
46 HEGEL: Philosophy of Right, PREF, 6a-7a; PART III, PAR 270, 85c / Philosophy of History, INTRO, 156d-157b; 168b-d; PART III, 310d
53 JAMES: Psychology, 301a; 879b-882a

4d. The eternity of Heaven and Hell: everlasting life and death

OLD TESTAMENT: Psalms, 16 esp 16:10-11; 73 esp 73:24-28; 145:10-13—(D) Psalms, 15 esp 15:10-11; 72 esp 72:24-28; 144:10-13 / Daniel, 7:13-18 esp 7:18
APOCRYPHA: Wisdom of Solomon, 1-5 esp 3-5—(D) OT, Book of Wisdom, 1-5 esp 3-5
NEW TESTAMENT: Matthew, 6:19-21; 18:8-9; 25:31-46 / Mark, 9:43-50; 10:17-31—(D) Mark, 9:42-49; 10:17-31 / Luke, 10:25-37 / John, 6:37-40; 8:51; 10:24-30; 11:23-27; 17:1-3 / Romans, 6 esp 6:23 / I Corinthians, 15:34-58 / II Corinthians, 4:12-5:10 / Galatians, 6:8 / I Peter, 1:3-7,22-25 / I John, 2:16-17; 5:11-12 / Jude, 5-8 / Revelation, 2:7-11; 3:5; 20-22 esp 20:10-15, 21:4-6, 22:1-5—(D) Apocalypse, 2:7-11; 3:5; 20-22 esp 20:9-15, 21:4-6, 22:1-5
18 AUGUSTINE: Confessions, BK XIII, PAR 50-53 124c-125a,c / City of God, BK XIII, CH 2 360b-361a; CH 12 365d-366a; CH 14-20 366b-371a; BK XIII, CH 22-BK XIV, CH 1 371c-377a; BK XIV, CH 15 388d-390a; BK XV, CH 1-3 397b,d-399c; CH 6 400c-401b; BK XIX, CH 4 511a-513c; CH 10-11 516c-517b; CH 27-28 529a-530a,c; BK XXI-XXII 560a-618d / Christian Doctrine, BK I, CH 4 625b-c; CH 21 629b; CH 24, 630d; CH 38-39 635c-636a
19 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I, Q 10, A 3, ANS and REP 2 42c-43b; Q 18, A 2, REP 2 105c-106b; Q 23, A 1, ANS and REP 3 132c-133b; Q 66, A 3 347b-348d; Q 75, A 7, REP 1 384d-385c; PART I-II, Q 4, A 7, REP 3 635b-636a; Q 5, A 4 639a-640b
20 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I-II, Q 67 81b-87c; Q 68, A 6 93c-94c; Q 87, AA 3-5 187b-189c; PART III, Q 18, AA 2-3 462d-464c; Q 19, A 11 472d-473d; Q 26, A 13 519d-520d
21 DANTE: Divine Comedy, HELL, I [112-129] 2b-c; III [1-18] 4a-b; [82-129] 5a-b; IV [13-45] 5c-d; VI [1-57] 8b-9a; VII [16-59] 9d-10a esp [55-59] 10a; XII [49-51] 16d-17a; XIV [28-42] 19d-20a; XV [22-42] 21b-c; PARADISE, III [34-90] 109d-110b; VII [64-78] 115d-116a; [121-148] 116b-c; XIV [1-66] 126d-127c; XV [1-12] 128b-c; XXX-XXXII 151d-157d esp XXXI [31-93] 153c-154a
22 CHAUCER: Second Nun’s Tale [15,787-800] 467a
23 HOBBES: Leviathan, PART III, 191b-198a; PART IV, 250c-251b, 253b-255b
25 MONTAIGNE: Essays, 265b-c
26 SHAKESPEARE: Richard III, ACT I, SC IV [42-63] 115a-b
29 CERVANTES: Don Quixote, PART II, 366d-367a
31 DESCARTES: Objections and Replies, 228b
32 MILTON: Paradise Lost, BK I [84-191] 95b-97b; [242-330] 98b-100b; BK II [85-92] 113a; [142-188] 114b-115a; BK III [274-343] 141b-143a; BK X [782-844] 291b-292b; BK XII [537-556] 331a
33 PASCAL: Pensées, 194-195, 206b-210b; 233, 214b-215a
35 LOCKE: Toleration, 5b-c; 15d-16a / Human Understanding, BK II, CH XXI, SECT 38 187b-c; SECT 62 194c-d
41 GIBBON: Decline and Fall, 233d-234d
42 KANT: Practical Reason, 346b-347c
44 BOSWELL: Johnson, 363a-b
46 HEGEL: Philosophy of History, PART IV, 315d
48 MELVILLE: Moby Dick, 347a

5. The knowledge and imagery of eternity

7 PLATO: Apology, 211b-c / Timaeus, 450b-451a
8 ARISTOTLE: Topics, BK I, CH 11 [104b13-18] 148a-b / Memory and Reminiscence, CH 1 [449b30-450a10] 690c-d
16 KEPLER: Harmonies of the World, 1048a
17 PLOTINUS: First Ennead, TR V, CH 7 20a-c / Third Ennead, TR VII, CH 3 120a-d
18 AUGUSTINE: Confessions, BK XI, PAR 13-17 92b-93c; BK XII, PAR 40 109b-110a; BK XIII, PAR 44 122d / City of God, BK XI, CH 5-6 324d-325d; CH 21 333a-d
19 AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, PART I, Q 10, A 1 40d-41d; A 2, REP 1 41d-42c; Q 13, A 1, REP 3 62c-63c; Q 42, A 2, REP 1,4 225d-227a; Q 46, A 1, ANS 250a-252d, A 2 253a-255a; Q 79, A 9, ANS and REP 3 422b-423d
21 DANTE: Divine Comedy, PURGATORY, XI [100-108] 69d; PARADISE, XXX-XXXII 151d-157d esp XXXI [31-93] 153c-154a
23 HOBBES: Leviathan, PART IV, 271b
30 BACON: Novum Organum, BK I, APH 48 110d-111a
32 MILTON: On Time 12a-b / At a Solemn Musick 13a-b / Sonnets, XIV 66a / Paradise Lost, BK XII [537-556] 331a
35 LOCKE: Human Understanding, BK II, CH XIV, SECT 26-27 160c-161a; SECT 30-31 161c-162a; CH XV, SECT 3-5 162d-163c; SECT 11-12 165a-c; CH XVII 167d-174a passim, esp SECT 5 168d-169a, SECT 10 170b-c, SECT 16 172a-b; CH XXIX, SECT 15 237a; SECT 16, 237d-238a
42 KANT: Pure Reason, 185a-b
49 DARWIN: Origin of Species, 154c
51 TOLSTOY: War and Peace, BK III, 156d; BK V, 216d-218b esp 217a-c; BK VII, 295b-c; BK IX, 355d-356a

CROSS-REFERENCES

For:

Other discussions of the distinction between eternity as infinite time and eternity as timelessness, see TIME 2; and for the relation of eternity to time, see TIME 2c.
Another consideration of infinite time, see INFINITY 3e.
The controversy concerning the infinity of time and the eternity of the world or motion, see ASTRONOMY 8c(1), 8d; CHANGE 13; TIME 2b; WORLD 4a; and for the relation of creation to eternity and time, see GOD 7a; TIME 2c; WORLD 4e(2).
The notion of permanent elements or principles of change, see CHANGE 2.
Other discussions of the eternity of God, see CHANGE 15c; GOD 4d.
The conception of the angels as aeviternal, see ANGEL 3c; TIME 2a.
The discussion of imperishable or incorruptible bodies, see ASTRONOMY 8a; BEING 7b(3); CHANGE 10c; ELEMENT 5a.
The consideration of the eternality of truth and of ideas, see CHANGE 15a; FORM 2b; IDEA 1c; IMMORTALITY 6c; TRUTH 5.
The conception of the eternity of Heaven and Hell or of eternal salvation and damnation, see HAPPINESS 7c; IMMORTALITY 5e-5f; PUNISHMENT 5e(1); SIN 6d.
The problem of the knowability of the infinite, see INFINITY 6b; KNOWLEDGE 5a(4).

ADDITIONAL READINGS

Listed below are works not included in Great Books of the Western World, but relevant to the idea and topics with which this chapter deals. These works are divided into two groups:

I. Works by authors represented in this collection. II. Works by authors not represented in this collection.

For the date, place, and other facts concerning the publication of the works cited, consult the Bibliography of Additional Readings which follows the last chapter of The Great Ideas.

AUGUSTINE. On the Immortality of the Soul, CH 1
AQUINAS. Summa Contra Gentiles, BK II, CH 32-38
- —. On the Power of God, Q 8
- —. De Aeternitate Mundi
SPINOZA. Correspondence, XII

II.

PROCLUS. The Elements of Theology, (I)
BOETHIUS. The Consolation of Philosophy, BK V, PROSA 6
ANSELM OF CANTERBURY. Monologium
MAIMONIDES. The Guide for the Perplexed, PART I, CH 13-16, 18, 22-23
BONAVENTURA. Breviloquium, PART VII
DUNS SCOTUS. Opus Oxoniense, BK I, DIST 2, Q 2
- —. Tractatus de Primo Principio (A Tract Concerning the First Principle)
ECKHART. Sermons and Collations, XXV
SUÁREZ. Disputationes Metaphysicae, XXX (7-9), L (3-6)
LEIBNIZ. New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, BK II, CH 14
- —. Monadology, PAR 6
VOLTAIRE. “Eternity,” in A Philosophical Dictionary
- —. The Ignorant Philosopher, CH 14, 16, 20
KIERKEGAARD. “The Expectation of an Eternal Happiness,” in VOL III, Edifying Discourses
- —. Philosophical Fragments
- —. Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp 345-385, 468-492, 508-513
WHEWELL. On the Philosophy of Discovery, CH 26
BRADLEY. Appearance and Reality, BK I, CH 4-5; BK II, CH 18, 26
ROYCE. The World and the Individual, SERIES II (3)
POHLE. Eschatology
HÜGEL. The Mystical Element of Religion
BERGSON. The Creative Mind, CH 1
A. E. TAYLOR. The Faith of a Moralist, SERIES I (3, 6)
DEWEY. The Quest for Certainty, CH 2
WHITEHEAD. Process and Reality, PART I, CH 2; PART II, CH 1; PART IV, CH 1 (5-6); PART V, CH 2
- —. Adventures of Ideas, CH 11-15