the light of truth, and gives to the soul that knows, the power of
knowing."[547] Under this light, the eye of reason apprehends the
eternal world of being as truly, yes more truly, than the eye of sense
apprehends the world of phenomena. This power the rational soul
possesses by virtue of its having a nature kindred, or even homogeneous
with the Divinity. It was "generated by the Divine Father," and, like
him, it is in a certain sense "_eternal_."[548] Not that we are to
understand Plato as teaching that the rational soul had an independent
and underived existence; it was created or "generated" in eternity,[549]
and even now, in its incorporate state, is not amenable to the
conditions of time and space, but, in a peculiar sense, dwells in
eternity; and therefore is capable of beholding eternal realities, and
coming into communion with absolute beauty, and goodness, and
truth--that is, with God, the _Absolute Being_.

[Footnote 547: Ibid., bk. vi. ch. xix.; see also ch. xviii.]

[Footnote 548: The reader must familiarize himself with the Platonic
notion of _"eternity" as a fixed state out of time existing
contemporaneous with one in time_, to appreciate the doctrine of Plato
as stated above. If we regard his idea of eternity as merely an
indefinite extension of time, with a past, a present, and a future, we
can offer no rational interpretation of his doctrine of the eternal
nature of the rational essence of the soul. An eternal nature
"generated" in a "past" or "present" time is a contradiction. But that
was not Plato's conception of "eternity," as the reader will discover on
perusing the "Timaeus" (ch. xiv.). "God resolved to create a moving image
of eternity, and out of that eternity which reposes in its own
_unchangeable unity_ he framed an eternal image moving according to
numerical succession, which we call _Time_. Nothing can be more
inaccurate than to apply the terms, _past, present, future_, to real
Being, which is immovable. Past and future are expressions only suitable
to generation which proceeds through time." Time reposes on the bosom of
eternity, as all bodies are in space.]

[Footnote 549: "Timaeus," ch. xvi., and "Phaedrus," where the soul is
pronounced arche de ageneton.]

Thus the soul (psyche) as a composite nature is on one side linked to
the eternal world, its essence being generated of that ineffable element
which constitutes the real, the immutable, and the permanent. It is a
beam of the eter