Soul in its Relation to Nous (V)

V. 3. 8
(Armstrong Selections from the Enneads)

[The soul is illuminated by Nous; and, being so illuminated, is raised to its level and becomes an image of it.]

This light [of Noûs] shines in the soul and illumines it: that is, it makes it intelligent: that is, it makes it like itself, the light above. You will come near to the nature of Nous and its content if you think of something like the trace of this light which is present in the soul, but still fairer and greater. For it is this illumination which gives the soul a clearer life, not, however, a generative life; on the contrary, it turns the soul to itself and does not allow it to scatter itself abroad, but makes it love the glory in Nous. It is not the life of sense-perception either, for this looks outwards, to the external world where its particular activity lies. But one who has received that light from true being looks, we may say, not particularly at visible things but just the opposite. It remains, then, that he must have received an intellectual life, a trace of the life of Nous: for true being is There.

The life in Noûs is also activity, the first light which lightens itself first of all and shines turned towards itself, at once enlightening and enlightened, the truly intelligible, thinking and thought, seen by itself and needing no other to enable it to see, sufficing to itself for seeing; for it is itself what it sees. It is known to us too by its very self; through itself the knowledge of it comes to us. Otherwise, from where should we get the means to speak of it? It is of such a nature that it grasps itself more clearly, and our apprehension is by means of it. By reasonings of this kind our soul is led back to it, by considering itself to be an image of Noûs and its life a trace and likeness of Nous, and that whenever it thinks it becomes godlike and Nous-like. If anyone asks it what sort of thing is that perfect and universal Nous, the primary self-knower, the soul first of all enters into Nous or makes room for its activity; then it shows itself to be in possession of the things in Nous of which it holds in itself the memory, and, by means of its own likeness to Nous is able somehow to see it, being brought to a more exact resemblance as far as any part of the soul can come to resemble Noûs.