Noûs pensa o Uno em uma multidão de Formas

V. 3. 10-11
(Armstrong Selection and Translation from the Enneads)

[The One does not need to think; It possesses Itself perfectly without any need of thought. Knowledge is always a process of completion, the fulfilling of a want. Noûs eternally seeks to know the One, but cannot grasp It in Its absolute Unity and Simplicity, and so thinks It in a multitude of images, which are the Forms.]

The One will not need to be inquisitive about Itself; for what will It learn by thinking? Its being belongs to It before there is any thought. Knowledge is a kind of wanting, and a finding by one who has been seeking. That which is absolutely simple remains turned towards Itself and does not seek to know anything about Itself: but that which unfolds itself must be multiple.

So Noûs is multiple, when it wants to think That which transcends it. For it does think It, but when it wants to apprehend It in Its simplicity it comes out grasping a succession of different things which it has multiplied in itself. It tends towards the One not as Noûs but as sight which does yet see, and it comes away holding a multiplicity which it has made itself. So it desires one thing of which it has in itself an indefinite representation and comes away holding another in itself which it has made multiple. It has an impression of That which is the object of its vision, or it would not have admitted its presence in itself; but the impression becomes multiple instead of one, and it sees it by this way of knowing, and so becomes sight which sees. At this stage it is really Noûs, when it grasps its object, and grasps it as Noûs. Before this it is only desire and unformed vision.