_Numen_ is so important a word in the Roman religion that it is necessary to be perfectly clear as to what was meant by it. It must be formed from _nuere_ as _flumen_ from _fluere_, with a sense of activity inherent in the verb. As _flumen_ is that which actively flows, so _numen_ is that which actively does whatever we understand by the word _nuere_; and so far as we can determine, that was a manifestation of will. _Adnuere_ is to consent, to give your good will to some act proposed or completed, and is often so used of Jupiter in the _Aeneid_. _Nuere_ should therefore express a simple exercise of will-power, and _numen_ is the being exercising it. In time it came to be used for the will of a god as distinct from himself, as in the fourth _Aeneid_ (269)-- ipse deum tibi me claro demittit Olympo regnator, caelum ac terras qui numine torquet. Or in the fourth _Eclogue_ (47)-- concordes stabili fatorum numine Parcae, where Servius explains it as "potestate, divinatione, ac maiestate." But beyond doubt this use is a product of the literary age, and the word originally indicated the being himself who exercised the will--a sense familiar to us in the opening lines of the _Aeneid_ ("quo numine laeso") and in innumerable other passages. Thus von Domaszewski in his collected papers (p. 157) is undoubtedly right in defining a _numen_ as a being with a will--"ein wollendes Wesen"; though his account of its evolution, and of the way in which in its turn it may produce a _deus_, may be open to criticism.