—namely, what they have imagined to be absolute existence; and, having dismissed sense perception, they suppose that this absolute is itself the concrete particulars and that nothing else at all remains in existence.

So it is said to them:

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that universal existence is really instantiated outside the mind as a universal, and that you have witnessed it. Every rational person knows that the existence of a shared universal does not negate the existence of a distinct particular. Thus animality and humanity, taken as absolute universals, do not conflict with the concrete animals or the concrete human beings; the existence of particular entities is therefore undeniably established in the external world.

Granted that you are oblivious to this and do not witness it, the mere absence of your perception of a thing does not entail its non-existence in itself. When a servant does not witness a thing, or does not desire it, or does not know it, or it never crosses his mind, or his awareness of it is extinguished, or he is overpowered, or he is absent, this in no way means that the thing has itself become nonexistent, annihilated, or devoid of reality. There is a clear difference between a thing’s ceasing to exist in itself and a person’s ceasing to witness, remember, or know it.

Yet these people—out of their misguidance—imagine that once their witnessing of existent things is extinguished, those things are themselves annihilated, so that nothing remains in existence except—