The point here is to recognize that no rational person disputes the intelligibles that constitute universal knowledge established within the soul.

The same applies to conceiving particular things existing externally, whether what is conceived is a self-subsisting entity or a quality inhering in an entity, and whether this conception is called intellectual apprehension, imagination, or estimation. The concern is not to dispute words, but to address meanings.

Once it is understood that a person has both conceptions of particular things existing externally and universal conceptions corresponding to those particulars, the source of confusion in this matter becomes clear.

Consider the assertion:

“The judgment of estimation or imagination may contradict the judgment of the intellect.”

If this means that a particular conception within the soul—of something perceptible to the senses, or of something one senses, such as enmity and friendship—may contradict the intellect, whose judgment is universal and general, then this is false.

If it means that the intellect affirms self-subsisting things in which qualities inhere, and that its conception of sensible things and the qualities inhering in them contradicts this, then this too is false. There is no incompatibility between the two. The issue is not whether conceptions of particulars contradict universals, but whether universal propositions contradict one another through negation and affirmation.