ted and that which
participates, as there is between the cause and the matter, the original
and the image, the faculty and the result. Wherein that which is by
itself and always the same principally differs from that which is by
another and never remains in one and the same manner; because the one
never was nor ever shall be non-existent, and is therefore totally and
essentially an ENS; but to the other that very being, which it has not
of itself but happens to take by participation from another, does not
remain firm and constant, but it goes out of it by its imbecility,--the
matter always gliding and sliding about the form, and receiving several
functions and changes in the image of the substance, so that it is
continually moving and shaking. As therefore he who says that the image
of Plato is not Plato takes not away the sense and substance of the
image, but shows the difference of that which is of itself from that
which is only in regard to some other, so neither do they take away
the nature, use, or sense of men, who affirm that every one of us, by
participating in a certain common substratum, that is, in the idea, is
become the image of that which afforded the likeness for our generation.
For neither does he who says that a red-hot iron is not fire, or that
the moon is not the sun, but, as Parmenides has it,

A torch which round the earth by night
Does bear about a borrowed light,

take away therefore the use of iron, or the nature of the moon. But if
he should deny it to be a body, or affirm that it is not illuminated,
he would then contradict the senses, as one who admitted neither body,
animal, generation, nor sense. But he who by his opinion imagines that
these things subsist only by participation, and reflects how far remote
and distant they are from that which always is and which communicates
to them their being, does not reject the sensible, but affirms that the
intelligible is; nor does he take away and abolish the results which
are wrought and appear in us; but he shows to those who follow him that
there are other things, firmer and more stable than these in respect
of their essence, because they are neither engendered, nor perish,
nor suffer anything; and he teaches them, more purely touching the
difference, to express it by names, calling these [Greek omitted] or
[Greek omitted] (THINGS THAT HAVE BEING), and those [Greek omitted]
or FIENTIA (THINGS ENGENDERED). And the same also usually befall