 Syrianus’ explanation of mathematical reasoning approaches the problem from a (typically Platonic) top-down perspective. He does not say that the kind of quasi-universalizing abstraction Aristotle has in mind is impossible, only that it will not have the required scope and accuracy—unless one assumes that we already possess a clear conception of mathematical accuracy. What in fact happens, according to Syrianus, is that this is impossible unless the human intellect possesses an innate understanding of mathematical principles and concepts which it projects onto the plane of our imagination from above in order to grasp them rationally as the substances that they are: “… geometry aims to contemplate the soul’s partless reason-principles (logoi) themselves but, being too feeble to employ these intellections, which are free of images, it extends these principles into imagined and extended shapes and magnitudes, and thus contemplates the former in the latter” (In metaph. 91, 31–34; trans. Dillon/O’Meara, modified). The place of mathematical objects is in our imagination, Syrianus suggests In metaph. 186, 17–23, and the case is comparable to matter receiving form, except that matter “does not know what it is receiving, nor can it hold on to it,” whereas the imagination, when it receives the mathematical blueprint from above, holds on to it to some extent and acquires an understanding of it.