Plotinus... what is Time?..

We are, thus, at the stage where we are to state what Time really is.


To this end we must go back to the state we affirmed of Eternity, unwavering Life, undivided totality, limitless, knowing no divagation[1], at rest in unity and intent upon it. Time was not yet: or at least it did not exist for the Eternal Beings. It is we that must create Time out of the concept and nature of progressive derivation, which remained latent in the Divine Beings.


How Time emerged we can scarcely call upon the Muses to relate since they were not in existence then—perhaps not even if they had been; though the Cosmos itself, when once engendered, could no doubt tell us best how Time arose and became manifest. Something thus the story must run:


Time at first—in reality before that ‘first’ was produced by desire of succession—Time lay, though not yet as Time, in the Authentic Existent together with the Cosmos itself; the Cosmos also was merged in the Authentic and motionless within it. But there was an active principle there, one set on governing itself and realizing itself (= the All-Soul), and it chose to aim at something more than its present: it stirred from its rest, and the Cosmos stirred with it. ‘And we (the active principle and the Cosmos), stirring to a ceaseless succession, to a next, to the discrimination of identity and the establishment of ever new difference, traversed a portion of the outgoing path and produced an image of Eternity, produced Time.’


- Plotinus
-- Enneads, III. 7. 10-11.