Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/168

Rh ually in mind when we speak of the divine knowledge as eternal. That eternity is a totum simul, the scholastics were well aware; and St. Thomas developes our present concept with a clearness that is only limited by the consequences of his dualistic view of the relation of God and the world. For after he has indeed well defined and beautifully illustrated the inclusive eternity of the divine knowledge, he afterwards conceives the temporal existence of the created world as sundered from the eternal life which belongs to God. And hereby the advantages of an accurate definition of the eternal are sacrificed for the sake of a special dogmatic interest.

Less subtle forms of speculation have led to uses of the word eternal, whose meaning is often felt to be far deeper than such usages can render explicit. But as these subtle usages are often stated, they are indeed open to the most obvious objections. An eternal knowledge is often spoken of as if it were one for which there is no distinction whatever between past, and present, and future. But such a definition is as absurd as if one should speak of our knowledge of a whole musical phrase or rhythm, when we grasped such a whole at once, as if the at once implied that there were for us no temporal distinction between the first and the last beat or note of the succession in question. To observe the succession at once is to have present with perfect clearness all the time-elements of the rhythm or of the phrase just as they are, — the succession, the tempo, the intervals, the pauses, — and yet, without losing any of their variety, to view them at once as one present musical idea. Now for our theory, that is precisely the way in which the eternal