make this an attribute of that, and at other times make that an attribute of this. They say, “An essence may acquire universality or particularity.”

The truth is that a universal essence is universal only in the mind, and what is in the mind exists externally only as something determinate. By its existence externally is meant the existence of something corresponding to it, just as knowledge corresponds to what is known, a name to what is named, and a will to what is willed. Otherwise, no rational person who understands what he is saying would claim that universals exist externally unless he means that what is universal in minds exists in concrete reality, but as something determinate.

Yet these people object to anyone who says, “The nonexistent is a thing established in external reality.” Although that assertion is false, theirs is even more unsound, even though both drink from the same spring: the confusion of what is in minds with what is in concrete reality.

Likewise, those who affirmed states in external reality and said, “They are neither existent nor nonexistent,” also drank from this spring. Anyone who supposed that the knower is one with the known, the lover with the beloved, and the worshipper with the worshipped—as happened to the proponents of particular union—has likewise drunk from this bitter, salty spring. Similarly, whoever advocated absolute union conceived of an absolute existence in his own mind and imagined that it existed externally. All these people drank from the spring of supposition and imagination, imagining that what exists in their supposition and imagination is established in external reality.

Yet they object to people of sound reason and upright natural dispositions when