I do not admit either solution, and I declare that your
question contains an absurdity, and not a difficulty to answer.
If however you think, in accordance with your dialectic assumptions,
that one or other of these alternatives must necessarily be true in
every case, let me ask you one little question: Is time in time,
or is it not in time? If it is contained in time, then in what
time, and what is it but that time, and how does it contain it?
But if it is not contained in time, what is that surpassing wisdom
which can conceive of a time which is timeless? Now, in regard to
this expression, “I am now telling a lie,” admit one of
these alternatives, either that it is true, or that it is a falsehood,
without qualification (for we cannot admit that it is both). But
this cannot be. For necessarily he either is lying, and so is
telling the truth, or else he is telling the truth, and so is
lying. What wonder is it then that, as in this case contraries
are true, so in that case they should both be untrue, and so your
clever puzzle prove mere foolishness? Solve me one more
riddle. Were you present at your own generation, and are you now
present to yourself, or is neither the case? If you were and are
present, who were you, and with whom are you present? And how did
your single self become thus both subject and object? But if
neither of the above is the case, how did you get separated from
yourself, and what is the cause of this disjoining? But, you will
say, it is stupid to make a fuss about the question whether or no a
single individual is present to himself; for the expression is not used
of oneself but of others. Well, you may be certain that it is
even more stupid to discuss the question whether That which was
begotten from the beginning existed before its generation or not.
For such a question arises only as to matter divisible by time.