in the soul: they do not remain after the soul is dispersed, for their inherence in the soul is conditional upon its continued existence. Thus, if it is supposed to be divided, it no longer remains, and so accidents cannot inhere in it. This is like the inherence of accidents in the body: the presence of life, sensation, and movement in one part of the body may depend on their presence in another. Thus, if certain limbs are severed, life, power, and sensation depart from another part.

What, then, prevents the inherence of knowledge and other accidents in the soul from being conditional upon its not being divided or corrupted, if it is capable of division?

Fourth response:

You speak of “a single instance of knowledge of a single, indivisible object.” What do you mean by a single, indivisible object of knowledge? If you mean the immaterial intellects, establishing their existence depends upon first establishing the existence of the soul.

Likewise, concerning the Necessary Existent, you have said that this cannot be denied of Him until it has first been denied of the body. If, then, it were denied of the soul on the basis of its being denied of Him, circular reasoning would follow.

Even granting that some of you do not hold this view, your opponent does not concede that anything exists in the manner you claim: such that neither it nor the subject in which it inheres can be pointed to.

As for universals, they have no established, indivisible object of knowledge in external reality. This claim rests only on the supposition of those who think that universals exist as universals in external reality. This is self-evidently false and is one of the foundations of their error in logic and metaphysics. Universals exist only in the mind.

The universal is what is general, and a general expression and a general meaning inhere in a body, just as a general expression inheres in the tongue, and as doubt in the abstract, body in the abstract, and colour