352 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



ancient and venerable saying is, " to all eternity." 

 This everlastingness, or indestructible pervadence of 

 infinite futurity, as we shall in a moment see, is a 

 real aspect in the being of one of the two great orders 

 of free self-consciousness, but it is only an aspect, and 

 only in that one order; while eternity, or free reality, 

 means something quite transcending this. It means 

 that each thoroughly real being is just self-defining, 

 self-operative, is existent in a sense that excludes the 

 alternative of its non-existence — in its central uni- 

 fying essence is quite out of and independent of 

 time, or is necessary {i.e. unavoidable and necessitat- 

 ing) instead of necessitated ; and that, in fact, time 

 itself takes its rise entirely from this self -thinking which 

 constitutes the free being as eternal and zvhole.^ 



But now note — and this is the point of foremost 

 importance — this eternal existence of the spirit is 

 essentially soii-definition, the putting of existence 

 that is unambiguously definite, incapable of confusion 

 with any other. The spirit is intrinsically individual : 



1 For Time, it would seem, is nothing but the mind's consciousness of 

 its own controUing unity, — living on, notwithstanding the throng of 

 differences from its defining Standard that are introduced into its life 

 by its act of self-definition (see pp. 362-369, below), and holding these 

 differences all in its one embrace. It is, however, only the immediate 

 or lowest form of this consciousness, and so gathers this miscellany of 

 items into no more than the loose union which we call sequence. It 

 is supplemented by more significant and increasingly stricter expres- 

 sions of the mind's unity, such as Space, Force, Syllogism, and so on, 

 up to Truth, Beauty, and, finally. Good, i.e. benignant love. 



