TO STUDY TIME WE HAVE TO DESCEND FROM THE INTELLIGIBLE WORLD.
6. (7). Speaking thus of eternity, it is not anything foreign to us, and we do not need to consult the testimony of anybody but ourselves. For indeed, how could we understand anything that we could not perceive? How could we perceive something that would be foreign to us? We ourselves, therefore, must participate in eternity. But how can we do so, since we are in time? To understand how one can simultaneously be in time and in eternity, it will be necessary to study time. We must therefore descend from eternity to study time. To find eternity, we have been obliged to rise to the intelligible world; now we are obliged to descend therefrom to treat of time; not indeed descending therefrom entirely, but only so far as time itself descended therefrom.
B. TIME.
THE OPINIONS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS ABOUT TIME MUST BE STUDIED.
If those blessed ancient philosophers had not already uttered their views about time, we would only need to add to the idea of eternity what we have to say of the idea of time, and to set forth our opinion on the subject, trying to make it correspond with the already expressed notion of eternity. But we now must examine the most reasonable opinions that have been advanced about time, and observe how far our own opinion may conform thereto.