If it be urged that Motion is but imperfect Act, there would be no objection to giving priority to Act and subordinating to it Motion with its imperfection as a species: Act would thus be predicated of Motion, but with the qualification "imperfect." Motion is thought of as imperfect, not because it is not an Act, but because, entirely an Act, it yet entails repetition . It repeats, not in order that it may achieve actuality- it is already actual- but that it may attain a goal distinct from itself and posterior: it is not the motion itself that is then consummated but the result at which it aims. Walking is walking from the outset; when one should traverse a racecourse but has not yet done so, the deficiency lies not in the walking- not in the motion- but in the amount of walking accomplished; no matter what the amount, it is walking and motion already: a moving man has motion and a cutter cuts before there is any question of Quantity. And just as we can speak of Act without implying time, so we can of Motion, except in the sense of motion over a defined area; Act is timeless, and so is Motion pure and simple. Are we told that Motion is necessarily in time, inasmuch as it involves continuity? But, at this, sight, never ceasing to see, will also be continuous and in time. Our critic, it is true, may find support in that principle of proportion which states that you may make a division of no matter what motion, and find that neither the motion nor its duration has any beginning but that the division may be continued indefinitely in the direction of the motion's origin: this would mean that a motion just begun has been in progress from an infinity of time, that it is infinite as regards its beginning. Such then is the result of separating Act from Motion: Act, we aver, is timeless; yet we are forced to maintain not only that time is necessary to quantitative motion, but, unreservedly, that Motion is quantitative in its very nature; though indeed, if it were a case of motion occupying a day or some other quantity of time, the exponents of this view would be the first to admit that Quantity is present to Motion only by way of accident. In sum, just as Act is timeless, so there is no reason why Motion also should not primarily be timeless, time attaching to it only in so far as it happens to have such and such an extension. Timeless change is sanctioned in the expression, "as if change could not take place all at once"; if then change is timeless, why not Motion also?- Change, be it noted, is here distinguished from the result of change, the result being unnecessary to establish the change itself.

The following statement from a modern text book may serve to point to the difference between the conception of Pure Duration, and Time: "Pure...

So that it comes to pass, that both Eternity’s stability becometh moved, and Time’s mobility becometh stable. So may we ever hold that God Himself is ...

Timaeus: our subsequent argument will be greatly hampered. The facts about them have already been stated in part; but in addition thereto we must...

Of this I'll give thee here on earth an instance, which the eye can see. Regard the animals down here - a man, for instance, swimming! The water...

And if all things in motion desire, not repose, but ever to make known their own proper movement, even this is an aspiration after the Divine Peace of...

There is always an action and reaction; an advance and a retreat; a rising and a sinking; manifested in all of the airs and phenomena of the...

Night follows day; and day night. The pendulum swings from Summer to Winter, and then back again. The corpuscles, atoms, molecules, and all masses of...

As long as the heart has not attained complete peace, it cannot move itself. One moves the movement and forgets the movement; this is not movement in...

Again: "Action begins." This because from the very inception of the Germ in the Cosmic Egg there is the manifestation of Activity, Motion, and...

The First Aphorism further states: "Action there was not: for there were no Things to act." This statement requires little or no explanation. There...

Very true. And suppose the objector to refine still further, and to draw the nice distinction that not only parts of tops, but whole tops, when they s...

And of things without life, plants, they say, are moved by transposition in order to growth, if we will concede to them that plants are without life. ...

Hence you inquire concerning the difference in the last things pertaining to them; but you leave uninvestigated such things as are first, and most hon...

Both, then, seem boundless, both eternal. And so stability, though naturally fixed, yet seeing that it can sustain the things that are in motion,—beca...

Timaeus: so that the whole of the living creature was moved, but in such a random way that its progress was disorderly and irrational, since it...

This little chapter is not without its special difficulty. Are we to read as a word implying motion, with as its determinative, or as implying...

O thou who hast set me in motion! for I was motionless, a mighty link within the close of Yesterday; my present activity is a link within the close...

Timaeus: the description, though but subsidiary, would prove a heavier task than the main argument which it subserves. Later on, perhaps, at our...

If space is, therefore, to be thought, [it should] not, [then, be thought as] God, but space. If God is also to be thought, [He should] not [be...

Must we not understand this in a sense befitting God? For we must reverently suppose that He is moved, not as beseems carriage, or change, or alterati...