46. Were there to exist one thing which excluded nothing, and was excluded by nothing, it would be simultaneous with every thing. Know you what this thing is? There is but one, God. It is therefore that the theologians say, with great truth, and with a profoundness which has not, perhaps, been at all times understood even by those who have made the remark, that God is present to all times; that to him there is no succession, no _before_ or _after_; that to him every thing is present, is _now_. 47. Of God alone is this true; in all else there is some exclusion, being and not-being, and therefore succession. Let us now, for example, examine how the motion of the plants in our gardens is excluded by that of the garden of Eden. How are those of our gardens moved? By existing, and also by being subject to conditions necessary to motion. How do they exist? By a development of the germs they themselves contain. What is this development? A series of motions, of being and of not-being, and consequently of things that exclude each other. There is, then, no simultaneousness between those of the garden of Eden and those of our own gardens; for between the former and the first germ, there was no mediation other than the movement of the first development; whereas, between the movements of those of our gardens and the first germ, many others have intervened. Here we have exclusion, being and not-being. The number of exclusions necessary to existence is very different in the two cases; therefore, there is no simultaneousness. Considering all the developments, and all the changes of the orb, as a dilated series of terms interlaced by a mutual dependence, as in fact they are by the laws of nature; and calling these terms A, B, C, D, E,--N, the plants of the garden of Eden belong to the term A, and those of ours, to the term N. 48. The non-simultaneousness of motion is proved in the same manner as the non-simultaneousness of existence, for motion is a manner of existing. Moreover, the air which agitates the plants of our gardens has been moved by another, and this other by yet another; and these motions, subject to all the fixed and constant laws of nature, are all interlinked from the very first motion, just as the wheels are interlocked in a system of machinery. But as the curvature of one wheel is not that of the other, so these motions are different, and exclude one another down to the last, which is the air which moves the present plants. 49. This explanation of succession and time, throws much light on the idea of eternity; and shows that eternity, or the simultaneousness of all existence, belongs only to the immutable being. All mutable beings, which necessarily imply a transition from not-being to being, and from being to not-being, involve a succession, if not in their substance, at least in their modifications.