Plotino - Tratado 26,15 (III, 6, 15) — As formas estão na matéria como as representações na alma

15. En cuanto a las cosas que reúnen en sí mismas el fuego del sol y que son iluminadas por un fuego sensible, diremos que son también seres sensibles. Por ello aparece claro que los rayos aquí reunidos provienen del exterior, y se siguen, están cercanos y se tocan, mostrando sus dos extremos. Tratándose de la materia, la forma le es exterior, pero en otro sentido. Porque basta ya que su naturaleza sea diferente y no hay necesidad de contar con los dos extremos. Diremos más: la materia es extraña a todo límite, siendo imposible su mezcla con la esencia por su heterogeneidad y i alta de parentesco con ella. Y éste es el motivo de que permanezca en sí misma: que ni lo que entra en la malcría saca provecho de ella, ni ella misma lo obtiene a su vez, de lo que entra, ocurriendo aquí como con las opiniones y representaciones que se dan en el alma, pues, en efecto, no se mezclan, sino que cada una se va de nuevo como si estuviese sola, sin arrastrar nada consigo ni dejar nada de sí misma. Es claro que la mezcla resulta imposible porque ellas son exteriores y no se encuentran próximas, no Iludiendo verse tampoco la una al lado de la otra por ser lógicamente distintas. La representación es aquí como la imagen en la materia. Pero la naturaleza de la imagen no es propia del alma, aunque muchas veces la representación parezca llevarla a donde ella quiera. Con todo, la representación tiene con el alma, poco más o menos, análoga relación que la forma con la materia. Y, sin embargo, no oculta el alma, aun siendo rechazada con frecuencia por las operaciones de ésta, pues no hace que el alma se oculte o que tenga una determinada representación por el hecho de unirse a ella. Porque el alma cuenta en sí misma con operaciones y razones que le son contrarias, con las cuales rechaza las representaciones que la invaden. La materia, en cambio, dispone de un poder más débil que el del alma y no tiene ningún ser verdadero, ni engañoso, que le pertenezca; carente de todas las cosas, ni siquiera puede presentarse del modo que sea. Así, aun siendo la causa por la que aparecen las cosas sensibles, no puede decir ni esto: yo estoy aquí. Y sí alguna vez la razón la descubre, profundizando en los otros seres, se aparece como alejada de todos ellos y de todas las apariencias posteriores. Sin embargo, se extiende a todo, como pareciendo acompañarlo y no acompañarlo.

XV. Les objets qui concentrent les rayons du soleil, recevant du feu sensible ce qui s’enflamme à leur foyer, sont eux-mêmes visibles. Ils apparaissent, parce que les images qui se forment sont autour et auprès d’eux, qu’elles se touchent, et enfin qu’il y a deux limites dans ces objets. Mais, quand la raison [séminale] est dans la matière, elle lui est extérieure d’une tout autre panière : c’est qu’elle a une nature différente (80). Il n’est pas nécessaire qu’il y ait ici deux limites : la matière et la raison sont étrangères l’une à l’autre par la différence d’essence et l’opposition de nature qui rend leur mélange impossible. La cause qui fait que chacune demeure en elle-même, c’est que ce qui entre dans la matière ne la possède pas, non plus que la matière ne possède ce qui entre en elle. C’est ainsi que l’opinion et l’imagination ne se mêlent pas dans notre âmes, que chacune d’elles reste ce qu’elle est, sans rien entraîner ni rien laisser, parce qu’il n’y a pas là de mixtion. Ces puissances sont extérieures l’une à l’autre, non qu’elles soient juxtaposées, mais parce qu’elles ont entre elles une différence qui est saisie par la raison au lieu de l’être par la vue. Ici l’imagination est une espèce de fantôme (quoique l’âme elle-même ne soit pas un fantôme, qu’elle paraisse faire et qu’elle fasse en effet beaucoup d’actes comme elle veut) ; l’imagination, dis-je, est alors avec l’âme à peu près dans le même rapport que la forme avec la matière. Cependant, elle ne cache point l’âme, qui l’écarté souvent par ses opérations ; jamais elle ne saurait la cacher tout à fait, lors même qu’elle la pénétrerait tout entière et qu’elle paraîtrait la voiler complètement. En effet, l’âme renferme en elle-même des opérations et des raisons contraires [à l’imagination], par lesquelles elle écarte les fantômes qui viennent l’assiéger (81). Mais la matière, étant infiniment plus faible que l’âme, n’a absolument rien des êtres, soit de vrai, soit de faux, qui lui appartienne en propre. Elle n’a rien qui puisse la faire apparaître elle-même, elle est le dénuement absolu de toutes choses. Elle est seulement pour les autres choses une came d’apparence (αἰτία τοῦ φαίνεσθαι) ; mais elle ne saurait dire : Je suis ici ou là. Si une raison profonde parvient à découvrir la matière en partant des autres êtres (82), elle affirme que la matière est une chose complètement abandonnée des êtres véritables; mais comme les choses postérieures aux êtres véritables paraissent elles-mêmes être, la matière est en quelque sorte étendue en toutes ces choses, semble à la fois les suivre et ne pas les suivre.

THE RELATION OF MATTER TO REASON ILLUSTRATED BY THAT OF OPINION AND IMAGINATION.

15. The objects that concentrate the rays of the sun, are themselves visible, by receiving from the fire of sensation what takes fire in their hearth. They appear because the images that form themselves are around and near them, and touch each other, and finally because there are two limits in these objects. But when the ("seminal) reason" is in matter, it remains exterior to matter in an entirely different manner; it has a different nature. Here it is not necessary that there be two limits; matter and reason are strangers to each other by difference of nature, and by the difference between their natures that makes any mixture of them impossible. The cause that each remains in itself is that what enters into matter does not possess it, any more than matter possesses what enters into it. That is how opinion and imagination do not mingle in our soul, and each remains what it was, without entailing or leaving anything, because no mingling can occur. These powers are foreign to each other, not in that there is a mere juxtaposition, but because between them obtains a difference that is grasped by reason, instead of being seen by sight. Here imagination is a kind of phantom, though the soul herself be no phantom, and though she seem to accomplish, and though she really accomplish many deeds as she desires to accomplish them.

Thus imagination stands to the soul in about the same lation as (form) with matter. Nevertheless (imagination) does not hide the soul, whose operations often disarrange and disturb it. Never could imagination hide the soul entirely, even if imagination shoul penetrate the soul entirely, and should seem to veil it completely. Indeed, the soul contains operations and reasons contrary (to imagination), by which she succeeds in putting aside the phantoms that besiege her. But matter, being infinitely feebler than the soul, possesses none of the beings, either of the true or false, which characteristically belong to it. Matter has nothing that could show it off, being absolutely denuded of all things. It is no more than a cause of appearance for other things; it could never say, "I am here, or there!" If, starting from other beings, profound reasoning should succeed in discovering matter, it ultimately declares that matter is something completely abandoned by true beings; but as the things that are posterior to true beings themselves seem to exist, matter might, so to speak, be said to be extended in all these things, seeming both to follow them, and not to follow them.

XV. In things, therefore, which collect fire from the sun about themselves, as they receive flaine from a sensible fire, they become themselves objects of sense. Hence also they are apparent, because the objects are external, successive and proximate, touch each other, and have two extremities. But the productive principle in matter, has the external after a different manner. For difference of nature is sufficient, not being indigent of a twofold boundary ; but being much more alienated than every boundary by a diversity of essence which is destitute of all alliance, it possesses a power repugnant to mixture. And this is the cause of its remaining in itself, because neither that which enters into it enjoys it, nor does it enjoy that which enters; just as opinions and imaginations in the soul are not mingled with each other, but each again departs, as being alone that which it is, neither attracting, nor leaving any thing, because it was not mingled, and having the external, not because it is superjacent, and is visibly different from that in which it is, but because reason distinguishes the one from the other. Here, therefore, imagination is as it were an image, (the soul not being an image naturally,) though it appears to be the leader of many things, and to lead them where it pleases. The soul, nevertheless, uses the imagination as matter, or as that which is analogous to matter. The imagination, however, does not conceal the soul, since the soul by its energies frequently expels the phantasy; nor would it ever be able to conceal it, though it should be wholly diffused through it, though this by the imagination appears to be sometimes effected. For the soul contains in herself energies and reasons contrary to those of the phantasy by which the acceding [phantasms] are repelled. Matter, however, is much more imbecile than the soul, and contains nothing of beings whether true or false, which is properly its own. Neither has it any thing through which it may become apparent, being a solitude of all things. It is, however, the cause to other things of their apparent subsistence; but is not able to say even this of itself, I am here [though I am by no means visible]. And if at any time a certain profound reason discovers where it is concealed among beings, it exclaims that it is something deserted by all beings, and by things which appear to be posterior to beings, that it is likewise attracted to all things, and as it seems follows, and again does not follow them.

15. Now the objects attracting the sun-rays to themselves - illuminated by a fire of the sense-order - are necessarily of the sense-order; there is perceptibility because there has been a union of things at once external to each other and continuous, contiguous, in direct contact, two extremes in one line. But the Reason-Principle operating upon Matter is external to it only in a very different mode and sense: exteriority in this case is amply supplied by contrariety of essence and can dispense with any opposite ends [any question of lineal position]; or, rather, the difference is one that actually debars any local extremity; sheer incongruity of essence, the utter failure in relationship, inhibits admixture [between Matter and any form of Being].

The reason, then, of the immutability of Matter is that the entrant principle neither possesses it nor is possessed by it. Consider, as an example, the mode in which an opinion or representation is present in the mind; there is no admixture; the notion that came goes in its time, still integrally itself alone, taking nothing with it, leaving nothing after it, because it has not been blended with the mind; there is no "outside" in the sense of contact broken, and the distinction between base and entrant is patent not to the senses but to the reason.

In that example, no doubt, the mental representation - though it seems to have a wide and unchecked control - is an image, while the Soul [Mind] is in its nature not an image [but a Reality]: none the less the Soul or Mind certainly stands to the concept as Matter, or in some analogous relation. The representation, however, does not cover the Mind over; on the contrary it is often expelled by some activity there; however urgently it presses in, it never effects such an obliteration as to be taken for the Soul; it is confronted there by indwelling powers, by Reason-Principles, which repel all such attack.

Matter - feebler far than the Soul for any exercise of power, and possessing no phase of the Authentic Existents, not even in possession of its own falsity - lacks the very means of manifesting itself, utter void as it is; it becomes the means by which other things appear, but it cannot announce its own presence. Penetrating thought may arrive at it, discriminating it from Authentic Existence; then, it is discerned as something abandoned by all that really is, by even the dimmest semblants of being, as a thing dragged towards every shape and property and appearing to follow - yet in fact not even following.