most rational people deny its existence, while al-Nazzām claims that every body contains an infinite number of such atoms.

The second is the intellectual substances affirmed by those philosophers who uphold them, although most rational people know self-evidently that these exist only in the mind, not as external entities—such as the absolute universals used to describe concrete entities.

They say that externally existing realities—which they call species, such as man, horse, and other animal species—are composed of these universals. Other examples include universal matter and substantial form, which they claim are two intellectual substances from which every body is composed, and the ten intellects, which they claim are immaterial entities. These people conceive the abstract intelligibles that a person apprehends apart from sensible entities, then imagine that those abstract intelligibles exist outside the mind, separate from sensible entities. Yet these are merely things conceived in the mind; they do not exist as external entities while remaining universal or abstract. They then claim that species are composed of them, just as the others claim that particular entities are composed of the parts they call indivisible atoms.

These matters have been discussed at length elsewhere, and it has been shown that this “one” which they affirm in metaphysics, natural philosophy, and logic has no reality except in the mind.

Whoever properly conceives this will find in these people's errors