into what is eternal and what is originated, and the like—just as the genus “animal” is divided into “rational” and “non-rational.”

This unconditioned absolute does exist outside the mind, for the simple noun is correctly applied to it: one says, “This is an animal; this is a human being.” Although the generic term embraces its species and individuals, it is nevertheless never encountered in external reality except as qualified and particularized.

Whoever asserts that it exists externally as a universal is mistaken. Universality is found only in intellects, not in concrete things. What exists outside the mind is always a determinate entity whose very conception rules out the possibility of another’s sharing in it. The intellect, however, abstracts the common, universal element present in those particulars, so it becomes a universal shared only in minds.

These theorists identify the Necessary Existence with this universal; at other times they place the Necessary after it, saying, “This is the differentia of the Necessary.”

Now, if one concedes that this universal existence is found outside the mind only in determinate form, then nothing exists externally except individuated beings together with the attributes that inhere in them. And should its extra-mental existence be posited, it would have to be either a part of those particulars or an attribute of them.

Under the first supposition, there would be no externally existing being who is Lord of the determinate existents; under the second, the Lord of beings would turn out to be one of their parts or one of their attributes. Yet it is self-evident to sound reason that an attribute inhering in a thing does not create