because disciplines are nothing else than reminiscences of middle
dianoetic forms, from which the productive powers of nature being derived
and inspired, give birth to all the mundane phenomena.

Plato however did not consider things definable, or in modern language
abstract ideas, as the only universals, but prior to these he established
those principles productive of science which essentially reside in the
soul, as is evident from his Phaedrus and Phaedo. In the 10th book of the
Republic too, he venerates those separate forms which subsist in a divine
intellect. In the Phaedrus, he asserts that souls elevated to the
supercelestial place, behold Justice herself, temperance herself, and
science herself; and lastly in the Phaedo he evinces the immortality of
the soul from the hypothesis of separate forms.

Syrianus[11], in his commentary on the 13th book of Aristotle's
Metaphysics, shows in defense of Socrates, Plato, the Parmenideans,
and Pythagoreans, that ideas were not introduced by these divine men
according to the usual meaning of names, as was the opinion of Chrysippus,
Archedemus, and many of the junior Stoics; for ideas are distinguished by
many differences from things which are denominated from custom. Nor do
they subsist, says he, together with intellect, in the same manner as
those slender conceptions which are denominated universals abstracted
from sensibles, according to the hypothesis of Longinus:[12] for if that
which subsists is unsubstantial, it cannot be consubsistent with intellect.

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[11] See my translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics, p. 347. If the reader
conjoins what is said concerning ideas in the notes on that work, with
the introduction and notes to the Parmenides in this, he will be in
possession of nearly all that is to be found in the writings of the