" But, according to a University Communications News Library article, the UW’s first chancellor, John Lathrop, who assisted in the creation of the motto, interpreted it to mean, ‘The divine within the universe, however manifested, is my light.’"
I think that interpretation has a lot of poetic license. If Cicero suddenly appeared among us and someone said to him “Numen lumen,” I doubt that he would interpret those two words as meaning “The divine within the universe, however manifested, is my light.”
To get that many layers and that much detail out of the motto you would have have to say something along the lines of “Divinum in universum tamen manifestatur lumen est.”
@donnaleighg Also off topic but I went to Penn and my H went to Notre Dame — I always jokingly call Penn’s team the “Fighting Quakers” (they are the Quakers) – it seems like such an oxymoron and had no idea it was ever a real mascot (no less of a college so close by)!
