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Translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page.
Plotinus Resources OnLine and in Print
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» Contents of this Ennead
II: 69 pages - You are on Page 16
But has the light gone inward?
No: it is simply no longer on the outside because the fire [of which it is the activity] is no longer outward going but has withdrawn towards the centre.
But surely the light has gone inward too?
No: only the fire, and when that goes inward the surface consists only of the non-luminous body; the fire can no longer act towards the outer.
The light, then, raying from bodies is an outgoing activity of a luminous body; the light within luminous bodies — understand; such as are primarily luminous — is the essential being embraced under the idea of that body. When such a body is brought into association with Matter, its activity produces colour: when there is no such association, it does not give colour — it gives merely an incipient on which colour might be formed — for it belongs to another being [primal light] with which it retains its link, unable to desert from it, or from its [inner] activity.
And light is incorporeal even when it is the light of a body; there is therefore no question, strictly speaking, of its withdrawal or of its being present — these terms do not apply to its modes — and its essential existence is to be an activity. As an example: the image upon a mirror may be described as an activity exercised by the reflected object upon the potential recipient: there is no outgoing from the object [or ingoing into the reflecting body]; it is simply that, as long as the object stands there, the image also is visible, in the form of colour shaped to a certain pattern, and when the object is not there, the reflecting surface no longer holds what it held when the conditions were favourable.
Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-Greece/plotinus/enneads-4b.asp?pg=16
