 It is important to notice that Kilwardby rules out the association of universals with divine ideas, as essences of things separate from matter, as Plato claimed (ut Plato posuit). For him, such ideas have no role in human cognition. In NSLPor 2 (M 2vb), he states that universals exist in God’s mind as exemplary and formal causes, but science is about universals that exist in and are abstracted from individual things; thus, the ideas (ydee) that exist in God’s mind from eternity are of no use to science (NLP I.36, 230–231).