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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 13
6. We return, then, to the question whether there could be light if there were no air, the sun illuminating corporeal surfaces across an intermediate void which, as things are, takes the light accidentally by the mere fact of being in the path. Supposing air to be the cause of the rest of things being thus affected, the substantial existence of light is due to the air; light becomes a modification of the air, and of course if the thing to be modified did not exist neither could be modification.
The fact is that primarily light is no appanage of air, and does not depend upon the existence of air: it belongs to every fiery and shining body, it constitutes even the gleaming surface of certain stones.
Now if, thus, it enters into other substances from something gleaming, could it exist in the absence of its container?
There is a distinction to be made: if it is a quality, some quality of some substance, then light, equally with other qualities, will need a body in which to lodge: if, on the contrary, it is an activity rising from something else, we can surely conceive it existing, though there be no neighbouring body but, if that is possible, a blank void which it will overleap and so appear on the further side: it is powerful, and may very well pass over unhelped. If it were of a nature to fall, nothing would keep it up, certainly not the air or anything that takes its light; there is no reason why they should draw the light from its source and speed it onwards.
Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/plotinus/enneads-4b.asp?pg=13
