Note (return) — Chapter XII

Plato made use of psychological and logical analysis in order to draw from the depth of consciousness certain fundamental ideas which are inherent in the mind--born with it, and not derived from sense or experience. These ideas he designates "the intelligible species" (τὰ νοουµενα γένη) as opposed to "the visible species"--the objects of sense. Such ideas or principles being found, he uses them as "starting-points" from which he may pass beyond the sensible world and ascend to "the absolute," that is, to God. 674 Having thus, by immediate abstraction, attained to universal and necessary ideas, he descends to the outer world, and attempts by these ideas to construct an intellectual theory of the universe. 675