is more remarkable.

If, however, it is perceptible to the senses, it must have a position, a location, a definite magnitude, and a definite quality. It cannot be perceived, or even imagined, otherwise. For everything perceived or imagined is necessarily distinguished by some of these attributes. In that case, it would not correspond to anything lacking those attributes, and so could not be predicated of many individuals differing in those respects.

Thus, the human being, considered as one in essence—or rather, in terms of the fundamental essence in which the many do not differ—is not perceptible to the senses, but purely intelligible. The same holds for every universal.”

These are his words. His followers followed his lead, establishing the existence of what is not perceptible to the senses by establishing intelligible universals. Yet it is self-evident that universals are universal only in the mind, not in external reality. Indeed, no universal exists in external reality at all. What is called a natural universal exists only as a determinate particular. What is universal in the mind exists in external reality as something determinate, not as a universal, as has been explained at length elsewhere.

It is by this argument and others like it that he establishes that existent things have principles that cannot be perceived by the senses.

As for his statement:

“If sensible things have principles, those principles are not sensible,”

this is misleading, because the term “sensible” may mean what is perceived by us