Full Idea
Sense which lies flat and grovelling in the individuals, and is stupidly fixed in the material form, is not able to rise up or ascend to an abstract universal notion.
Gist of Idea
Sense is fixed in the material form, and so can't grasp abstract universals
Source
Ralph Cudworth (On Eternal and Immutable Morality [1688], Ch.III.III.2)
Book Reference
'British Moralists 1650-1800 Vol. 1', ed/tr. Raphael,D.D. [Hackett 1991], p.116
A Reaction
This still strikes me as being one of the biggest problems with reductive physicalism, that a lump of meat in your head can grasp abstractions (whatever they are) and universal concepts. Personally I am a physicalist, but it is weird.