Likewise, if someone knows that an individual exists, he knows that this individual is not nonexistent; and if he knows that the individual is not nonexistent, he knows that he exists. He knows that the individual’s existence and nonexistence cannot coexist, but contradict one another, even without calling to mind the general, universal proposition that nothing can be both affirmed and negated, or both existent and nonexistent. The same applies to universal propositions generally.

A person’s knowledge of what holds true of specific, individual instances may be more immediately evident to the intellect than the corresponding universal judgment. His knowledge of judgments concerning particular things need not depend on those universal propositions. Thus, a person’s knowledge that he did not bring himself into being does not depend on his knowing that no human being brought himself into being, or that nothing that came into being brought itself into being. Rather, these general, universal propositions are true, and that particular proposition is true; knowledge of the latter is innate and self-evident, requiring no inference to establish it. Although a universal proposition may be used to establish a judgment concerning some particular instances, and knowledge of a universal proposition may be acquired through knowledge of particular instances, the point is that such inference is not a prerequisite for knowledge. Particular instances may be known just as universal propositions are known, and with even greater certainty. Indeed, someone may be certain about particular instances without being certain about universal propositions. Thus, you will find no one who doubts that this piece of writing must have a writer, or that this building must have a door; rather, this is known immediately.

Although the knowledge that everything that comes into being must have an agent who brings it into being