 According to Grosseteste, time is “the privation of the at-once of eternity from the totality of being” (Dales 1963a, 96).  He means that for there to be time there must be items whose existence does not adhere as a whole, as he puts it, with the at-once of eternity, that is, whose existence is not instantaneous.  Eternity, is, as it were, a fixed point subject to a continuous succession of the adherences of instantaneous bits of the totality of existence, one bit adhering to eternity only continuously to be replaced by another; this continuous replacement constitutes the flow of time. Grosseteste defines the instant, by which he means the now, as this adherence of being with the at-once of eternity, and likewise defines past and future in terms of this adherence. He realizes that his use of tenses in his explanations of these notions renders them ultimately circular, but asks that he not be criticized “for making these differences known in terms, as it were, of themselves, for it does not come to mind, or does not do so easily, how they could otherwise be made known” (Dales 1963a, 98).