Plato himself, indeed, does say, not that the nature of time is to
be a measure or something measured, but that to make it known there
is, in the circular movement of the universe, a very short element
(the interval of a day), whose object is to demonstrate the smallest
portion of time, through which we are enabled to discover the nature
and quantity of time. In order to indicate to us its nature ("being"),
(Plato[438]) says that it was born with the heavens, and that it is
the mobile image of eternity. Time is mobile because it has no more
permanence than the life of the universal Soul, because it passes on
and flows away therewith; it is born with the heavens, because it is
one and the same life that simultaneously produces the heavens and
time. If, granting its possibility, the life of the Soul were reduced
to the unity (of the Intelligence), there would be an immediate
cessation of time, which exists only in this life, and the heavens,
which exist only through this life.
TIME AS THE PRIOR AND POSTERIOR OF THE MOVEMENT OF THIS LIFE WOULD BE
ABSURD.
The theory that time is the priority and posteriority of this (earthly)
movement, and of this inferior life, is ridiculous in that it
would imply on one hand that (the priority and posteriority of this
sense-life) are something; and on the other, refusing to recognize
as something real a truer movement, which includes both priority and
posteriority. It would, indeed, amount to attributing to an inanimate
movement the privilege of containing within itself priority with
posteriority, that is, time; while refusing it to the movement (of the
Soul), whose movement of the universal Sphere is no more than an image.
Still it is from the movement (of the Soul) that originally emanated
priority and posteriority, because this movement is efficient by
itself. By producing all its actualizations it begets succession, and,
at the same time that it begets succession, it produces the passing
from one actualization to another.