On Nicomachus's Introduction to Arithmetic

IAMBLICHUS

He knew and spoke of the onta beings as the immaterial, the eternal, and the only active things—which is what is incorporeal—while the others are onta beings homonymously, being called so by participation in them: corporeal forms and matter, which are generated and corruptible, and never truly existing. Wisdom, he said, is the knowledge of the primarily existing things, not of those that are so homonymously; since corporeal things are not even knowable, nor do they admit of stable knowledge, being infinite and incomprehensible to science, and, as it were, not existing by contrast to the universals, and not even able to fall under a definition in a descriptive manner. It is not possible to conceive of a science of things that are by nature unknowable. Therefore, it is not likely that there is a yearning for a science that does not exist, but rather for that which concerns the primarily existing things, which are always in the same state and in the same manner, and which always coexist with their own appellation. For indeed, by the apprehension of these, it happens that the knowledge of those that are homonymously existing also follows, though it was never practiced as such, just as the knowledge of the particular follows that of the universal. For Archytas says: "Having judged well regarding the universals, they were destined also to see well the nature of the particulars." For this reason, beings are neither of one kind nor simple, but are already seen as varied and many-formed: the intelligible and the incorporeal, which are the objects of being, and the corporeal and...