2. (3). What then is that thing by virtue of which the intelligible
world is eternal and perpetual? Of what does perpetuity consist?
Either perpetuity and eternity are identical, or eternity is related
to perpetuity. Evidently, however, eternity consists in an unity, but
in an unity formed by multiple elements, in a conception of nature
derived from intelligible entities, or which is united to them, or
is perceived in them, so that all these intelligible entities form
an unity, though this unity be at the same time manifold in nature
and powers. Thus contemplating the manifold power of the intelligible
world, we call "being" its substrate; movement its life; rest its
permanence; difference the manifoldness of its principles; and
identity, their unity.[441] Synthesizing these principles, they fuse
into one single life, suppressing their difference, considering
the inexhaustible duration, the identity and immutability of their
action, of their life and thought, for which there is neither change
nor interval. The contemplation of all these entities constitutes
the contemplation of eternity; and we see a life that is permanent
in its identity, which ever possesses all present things, which does
not contain them successively, but simultaneously; whose manner of
existence is not different at various times, but whose perfection is
consummate and indivisible. It therefore contains all things at the
same time, as in a single point, without any of them draining off; it
resides in identity, that is, within itself, undergoing no change. Ever
being in the present, because it never lost anything, and will never
acquire anything, it is always what it is. Eternity is not intelligible
existence; it is the (light) that radiates from this existence, whose
identity completely excludes the future and admits nothing but present
existence, which remains what it is, and does not change.