standard dictionary translation is "mind," but this does not have the correct connotations,
particularly when the word is used in a religious philosophy. If we were to say that Plotinus put
mind above soul, we should give a completely wrong impression. McKenna, the translator of
Plotinus, uses "Intellectual-Principle," but this is awkward, and does not suggest an object suitable
for religious veneration. Dean Inge uses "Spirit," which is perhaps the best word available. But it
leaves out the intellectual element which was important in all Greek religious philosophy after
Pythagoras. Mathematics, the world of ideas, and all thought about what is not sensible, have, for
Pythagoras, Plato, and Plotinus, something divine; they constitute the activity of nous, or at least
the nearest approach to its activity that we can conceive. It was this intellectual element in Plato's
religion that led Christians--notably the author of Saint John's Gospel--to identify Christ with the
Logos. Logos should be translated "reason" in this connection; this prevents us from using
"reason" as the translation of nous. I shall follow Dean Inge in using "Spirit," but with the proviso
that nous has an intellectual connotation which is absent from "Spirit" as usually understood. But
often I shall use the word nous untranslated.
Nous, we are told, is the image of the One; it is engendered because the One, in its self-quest, has
vision; this seeing is nous. This is a difficult conception. A Being without parts, Plotinus says,
may know itself; in this case, the seer and the seen are one. In God, who is conceived, as by Plato,
on the analogy of the sun, the light-giver and what is lit are the same. Pursuing the analogy, now
may be considered as the light by which the One sees itself. It is possible for us to know the
Divine Mind, which we forget through self-will. To know the Divine Mind, we must study our
own soul when it is most god-like: we must put aside the body, and the part of the soul that
moulded the body, and "sense with desires and impulses and every such futility;" what is then left
is an image of the Divine Intellect.
"Those divinely possessed and inspired have at least the knowledge that they hold some greater
thing within them, though they cannot tell what it is; from the movements that stir them and the
utterances that come from them they perceive the power, not themselves, that moves them: in the
same way, it must be, we stand towards the Supreme when we hold nous pure; we know the
Divine Mind within, that which gives Being and all else of that order: but we know, too,