LIBER CHAOS Bl. Raymond Lull Doctor Illuminatus

Part II
10 Predicates

N - Time

a.1. If we want to understand that time is something real, we must consider motion in the eighth sphere and in the Chaos to learn about time through motion, and thus we must know that motion, which exists through potentiality, habit and act, is better understood and habituated if time is something, than if it is nothing; and given that whatever is more intelligible and habituable convenes with being and its opposite with non being, it remains therefore that time is something real, or else ignoring something would convene with being and majority, whereas understanding something would convene with non being and minority, which is impossible and contrary to God's goodness, greatness, eternity, wisdom, will etc. which is also impossible.

2. Heaven did not exist, and now exists; a man who did not exist, now exists and a man who existed no longer exists. Moreover, adverbs like before, after, quickly, slowly exist so that if time exists, these words are truly written to stand for time as something that really exists; but if time is nothing, then these words stand for a merely rational notion of some non existent thing called time, and in this way reason cannot discern the real truth about this thing, namely something that is really nothing, and thus the said words would be falsely applied to time. It remains therefore that time is something real so that its description can convene with truth and not with falsehood and privation.

3. Duration is taken to describe eternity, and since duration cannot be as really, rationally and aptly described by time if time is nothing real, as it can be described by time if time is something real, time must be real so that it can be used to best describe the duration of eternity, and the likeness of time can signify that in eternity there is no time, or else God's goodness, greatness, will, justice and simplicity would be opposed to His eternity, which is impossible.

4. The first degree of Chaos existed before the second, and the second before the third, which is obvious enough, but it would not be obvious without objectified time, and hence, if time is nothing, the objective power is objectifying something false in order to objectify something true and in this way there is better agreement between something false and something true, than there is between one true thing and another, and since this is false, time must therefore be something real, so that from its influence and virtue, the intellective power can receive its object in a true way without falsehood, and so that God's truth be not opposed to His greatness and simplicity in the greatness of objective and objectifiable virtue.

5. Form and matter cannot interact without conjunction, nor can the beginning and the end be without the middle, nor the operative and the operated without operation; likewise, generation and corruption, mixture and digestion, cannot interact without time, and therefore time must be something real.

6. The generation and corruption of form and matter cannot proceed without the corruption of something, but if time is nothing, the said impossibility is lessened, but if it really is something, the said impossibility is greater, which is clearly obvious, because reason and time do not convene as well if time is nothing, as they do if time is something.

7. If time really exists, there is greater concordance between it and natural appetite; but if it does not really exist, the said concordance is lessened. Hence, it would follow that reason and something that does not exist, namely time, would be in greater concordance and proportion than are time, appetite and motion, which is impossible. Therefore etc...

8. If time really exists, it follows that present and past things can be better remembered, understood and desired than if time is nothing, which is clearly obvious, because majority is greater in something that is more remembered, understood and desired than in something that is less remembered etc. Therefore time is something, or else it would follow that majority convenes with non being, and minority with being, which is impossible. 

9. If time is something real, every mobile thing is more greatly diversified from other mobile things through motion, but if time were nothing, then the opposite would follow and we would all exist in one instant with motion but without time, and consequently, existence would have a greater affinity with motion than with time because motion is real, and this is a self evident impossibility.

10. If time is real, the five universals and ten predicates are more real than if time is not real; this is obvious, if you know how to discourse through difference, concordance, contrariety, the beginning, the middle, the end, majority, equality, minority, affirmation, doubt and negation; hence, if time were nothing, it would follow that mere reason could make up for one non existing thing with some other non existing thing, but that created reality could not make up for something that does not exist as it cannot supplement it with something that exists but only with something that does not, and on account of this, there would be an inconvenience between creator and creature in the greatness of concordance between cause and effect, and as this is impossible, the opposite must necessarily be true.
 

b. We proved with ten reasons that time is real, and now we intend to clarify what time is and to show what things are not of the essence of time, as follows.

1. Time is that without which present things cannot be, and without which past things could not have been, and without which future things could not be.

2. And time is that without which adverbs such as before, after, fast, slowly, frequently, rarely cannot exist, and without which there cannot be any increase, decrease, alteration, privation, motion, potentiality, habit, position, act; and so with other things like these.

3. Without God, there can be no creation; likewise, without time, there can be no number of days, hours etc. But this does not mean that time is the efficient cause of number.

4. Time is an accident which exists so that many things can exist and move substantially and accidentally, like the first, second and third Chaos and all the things that were, are and will be in them; but this does not mean that what we call past and future time is anything real, but rather that it is merely a rational construct; because time is, so to say, a simple and indivisible point, invisible, always present, its subject is heaven, and as its subject is divisible and mobile only in its parts but not as a whole, time is figuratively and rationally described as something divisible by accident, but nonetheless, its real form is indivisible, given that the entirety of its essence is always present.

5. Just as the Sun instills its virtue but not its essence into things below, so does time instill its virtue and not its essence into distinct mobile things, so that its simple form, i.e. its essence, is neither corrupted nor divided; now just as sunlight lights up glass, so does time light up, for the intellect and reason, the things which exist in time in different ways while time remains ever the same, without distinction.

6. Just as an arrow moves through space under the virtual impulse of the bowstring, although the string is not in contact with it, so likewise on account of the influence of the virtue of time, diverse "nows" exist in its subject without any diversification of time, and this is because these "nows" are not of the essence of time, rather, they are accidentally instilled by the influence of the virtue of time, so that many "nows" are described by time, because the intellect, due to time, describes different "nows" and discerns between one "now" and another.

7. Stopping the Sun's motion would also stop the motion of shadow, and there would be no shadow if the entire center of the earth which stands in the middle of the firmament were nothing, and consequently there would be no number of years, days, hours and points in time, but time would nonetheless remain what it is; and supposing all this, we say that time would still remain that thing within which the firmament, the Sun and their motion all exist.

8. In God's essence, there is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; and the Father exists in the essence in one way, the Son in another way and the Holy Spirit in another way, without any diversity of essence, so that distinction exists only between the Father, the Son and the Holy spirit. Likewise, all created things exist in diverse ways in time without any diversification of time.

9. Time is indivisible and many distinct things exist within it which are not of its essence, although they are subject to it; just as whiteness is indivisible and exists in all white things composed of distinct substantial parts without any distinction of whiteness, and this applies likewise to quantity, which is indistinct in the genus, although the genus comprises a vast quantity of things belonging to distinct species. This shows that what we call past and future time is not time at all, nor is it of the essence of time. Rather, time is depicted and described figuratively by what we call the past and the future.

10. No mobile thing is time, although all mobile things exist in time; time cannot be altered, although we say that now is one time and just now is another time. But time is really one in number without any otherness, although reason accidentally appropriates otherness to time so it can make use of time, or else it would be impossible to deal with time, just as reason cannot deal with locus without a container and content. This fallacious reasoning apprehends time through the imagination by representing it in some mobile subjects whose present, past and future are imaginable. But things imagined in this way are not time, nor even parts of time.