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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
128 pages - You are on Page 103
14. But would this mean that if there were no Matter nothing would exist?
Precisely as in the absence of a mirror, or something of similar power, there would be no reflection.
A thing whose very nature is to be lodged in something else cannot exist where the base is lacking — and it is the character of a reflection to appear in something not itself.
Of course supposing anything to desert from the Authentic Beings, this would not need an alien base: but these Beings are not subject to flux, and therefore any outside manifestation of them implies something other than themselves, something offering a base to what never enters, something which by its presence, in its insistence, by its cry for help, in its beggardom, strives as it were by violence to acquire and is always disappointed, so that its poverty is enduring, its cry unceasing.
This alien base exists and the myth represents it as a pauper to exhibit its nature, to show that Matter is destitute of The Good. The claimant does not ask for all the Giver’s store, but it welcomes whatever it can get; in other words, what appears in Matter is not Reality.
The name, too [Poverty], conveys that Matter’s need is never met. The union with Poros, Possession, is designed to show that Matter does not attain to Reality, to Plenitude, but to some bare sufficiency — in point of fact to imaging skill.
Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/plotinus/enneads-3.asp?pg=103
