Laudator Temporis Acti

Allen Upward (1863-1926), The New Word (New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1910), pp. 56-57:

The Greek lexicon has not half done its work in telling us that idea meant appearance. Even in Plato's time it had got farther than that. Aquinas, who wrote in Latin, and translates it by the Latin forma, explains idea as being the builder's plan of a not-yet-built house. Now my Dutch word-book renders "idea" (as an English word) by ontwerp, which is to say, out-throw—that which the mind throws out, and not what it takes in. And in Holland a builder's plan is called an ontwerp. When the mind of a great Roman theologian jumps with the common mind of a Dutch folk, we ought to be able to take the result with some security. And it is the opposite pole of the meaning given us by the lexicon. The idea is not the appearance of a thing already there, but rather the imagination of a thing not yet there. It is not the look of a thing, it is a looking forward to a thing.