external reality without its necessary concomitant. Existing either in the mind or externally is one of its necessary concomitants, yet the thing itself can be conceived, for not knowing something is not the same as knowing that it does not exist. Similarly, you can conceive of a human being without considering its existence or nonexistence, although it must either exist or not exist, since neither of two contradictories can both be absent.

These people take the mind’s supposition of impossible things as evidence that they exist, and liken necessary existence to impossible existence.

Likewise, a person conceives of knowledge in the abstract and power in the abstract, while knowing that these can exist only in a living, knowing, capable being.

Similarly, a person conceives of an animal in the abstract without also conceiving it as rational or nonrational; it neither lives forever nor dies, neither knows nor is ignorant, neither is incapable nor capable, and neither rests nor moves. Can its conception in the mind then be taken as evidence that it exists? Or could an animal in the abstract exist externally, devoid of all these opposing attributes, neither dying nor living forever, neither capable nor incapable?

It is well known that the mind’s suppositions and the intellect’s conceptions include things that have no external existence: sometimes nothing corresponds to them—this is mere imagining—and sometimes something does correspond to them, as a name corresponds to what it names and knowledge to what is known,