[Sidenote: p. 344.] 20. Now Basilides and Isidore, Basilides’ true son and disciple, say that Matthias recounted to them secret[28] discourses which he had heard from the Saviour in private teaching.[29] We see then how plainly Basilides together with Isidore and their whole band belie not only Matthias but also the Saviour. There was, he says, [a time] when Nothing was, not even the nothing of existing things, but baldly and unreservedly and without any sophism, nothing at all. But when I say, says he, that [this] _was_, I do not say that this existed, but I speak thus to signify what I wish to indicate. I say then that nothing at all existed. For, says he, that which is named is plainly not ineffable; for at any rate we call one thing ineffable, but another not ineffable. For truly that which is not even ineffable is not named ineffable, but is, he says, above every name which is named. For neither are there names enough for the cosmos, he says, so diverse is it, but there is a lack of them. Nor do [Sidenote: p. 345.] I undertake, says he, to find proper names for everything; but one must silently understand in the mind not their names, but the properties of the things named. For identity of names has made confusion and error concerning things[30] among those who hear them. And they who first made this appropriation and theft from the Peripatetic lead astray the folly of those who herd with them. For Aristotle who was born many generations earlier than Basilides, was the first to set forth in the _Categories_ a system of homonyms which these men expound as their own and as a novelty [derived] from the secret discourses of Matthias.