CHAPTER XLV ---- OF THE IDEA.
'AN "idea" is an incorporeal entity ( οὐσία ), subsisting itself, and by itself, but giving its image to portions of formless matter, and becoming the cause of their manifestation.
'Socrates and Plato suppose the ideas to be separable from the matter, subsisting in the thoughts and in the presentations of god, that is, of the mind.
'Aristotle allowed the specific forms and ideas to remain, not however as separate from the matter, having freed himself from the notion of its being done by god.
'The Stoic followers of Zeno said that the ideas are thoughts of our own.'