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Translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page.
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» Contents of this Ennead
128 pages - You are on Page 104
It is, of course, impossible that an outside thing belonging in any degree to Real-Being — whose Nature is to engender Real-Beings — should utterly fail of participation in Reality: but here we have something perplexing; we are dealing with utter Non-Being, absolutely without part in Reality; what is this participation by the non-participant, and how does mere neighbouring confer anything on that which by its own nature is precluded from any association?
The answer is that all that impinges upon this Non-Being is flung back as from a repelling substance; we may think of an Echo returned from a repercussive plane surface; it is precisely because of the lack of retention that the phenomenon is supposed to belong to that particular place and even to arise there.
If Matter were participant and received Reality to the extent which we are apt to imagine, it would be penetrated by a Reality thus sucked into its constitution. But we know that the Entrant is not thus absorbed: Matter remains as it was, taking nothing to itself: it is the check to the forthwelling of Authentic Existence; it is a ground that repels; it is a mere receptacle to the Realities as they take their common path and here meet and mingle. It resembles those reflecting vessels, filled with water, which are often set against the sun to produce fire: the heat rays — prevented, by their contrary within, from being absorbed — are flung out as one mass.
It is in this sense and way that Matter becomes the cause of the generated realm; the combinations within it hold together only after some such reflective mode.
Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/plotinus/enneads-3.asp?pg=104
