It has been noted by several authors that classical Greek philosophers operated under the fundamental assumption that the universe consisted of only two realms – the intelligible and the sensible. Many of their philosophical speculations moreover were ultimately based on an attempt to define the relationship between the two. This, it may be argued, was the limit of their concern for the problem of creation.
To the Platonists (including of course the Neoplatonists) the realm of the intelligible contained all that was eternal, permanent and fixed. In it things existed in a simple state, or using what seems to me to be a more modern term, in a pure state. The sensible world, by contrast, was thought to be unreal because it consisted of composite or impure mixtures. Since these were dissolvable, they were consequently finite and temporary.
via The Institute of Ismaili Studies – The Ismaili Vocabulary of Creation.
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