In accordance with the Platonic-Aristotelian commitment to Mind over Matter the Neoplatonists’ answer to this question was that the outer activity and effect of the First must be nous, a difficult and ambiguous concept commonly translated as “Intellect”. It seems preferable to translate the term nous in an experientially more concrete and accessible way as pure and absolute “Consciousness”. According to Neoplatonic theory, Consciousness would not be some kind of emergent property of material constituents arranged in a certain way, but rather be the first effect of the activity of the One, the most supreme form of reality (since the One was posited to be beyond Being), a kind of pre-embodied power of cognition as such. Neoplatonists referred to Consciousness as the second “Hypostasis”, a term that would have a long and complex history as it acquired new and related meanings in Christian contexts. “Hypostasis” is an abstract noun derived from a verb meaning “to place oneself under or beneath”, with the connotation of “standing one’s ground”. The word “hypostasis” therefore denotes a distinct substantial being or realm of reality of a certain kind which, in the case of Consciousness, is the derivative outer activity of the first principle. The term could also be applied to the One as the “first hypostasis”, in which case the connotation of subordination would recede into the background.