, 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
ancients on this subject.

[12] It appears from this passage of Syrianus that Longinus was the
original inventor of the theory of abstract ideas; and that Mr. Locke was
merely the restorer of it.
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Nor are ideas according to these men notions, as Cleanthes afterwards
asserted them to be. Nor is idea definite reason, nor material form; for
these subsist in composition and division, and verge to matter. But ideas
are perfect, simple, immaterial, and impartible natures. And what wonder
is there, says Syrianus, if we should separate things which are so much
distant from each other? Since neither do we imitate in this particular
Plutarch, Atticus, and Democritus, who, because universal reasons
perpetually subsist in the essence of the soul, were of opinion that these
reasons are ideas: for though they separate them from the universal in
sensible natures, yet it is not proper to conjoin in one and the same the
reason of soul, and an intellect such as ours, with paradigmatic and
immaterial forms, and demiurgic intellections. But as the divine Plato
says, it is the province of our soul to collect things into one by a
reasoning process, and to possess a reminiscence of those transcendent
spectacles, which we once beheld when governing the universe in conjunction
with divinity. Boethus,[13] the peripatetic too, with whom it is proper to
join Cornutus; thought that ideas are the same with universals in sensible
natures. However, whether these universals are prior to particulars, they
are not prior in such a manner as to be