So, when people cannot distinguish between the existence of the Creator and the existence of created things—until they come to believe that the creatures’ existence is identical to His—they rank as the most misguided of all on account of this very confusion. Their error lies in the fact that all entities share the mere name “existence,” whereupon they concluded that existence is a single reality and failed to differentiate between what is numerically one and what is generically one.

Others, on hearing that “all beings share the designation ‘existence,’” assumed that such wording necessarily entails comparison or composition. They therefore claimed that the term “existence” is applied only by pure verbal coincidence, thereby opposing the consensus of rational people of every stripe that existence is divided into eternal and originated, and into other well-known categories of beings.

A third group supposed that if all things share the word “existence,” there must, outside the mind, be some common entity actually shared by them all. They alleged that beyond the mind there are absolute universals—such as absolute existence, absolute animal, absolute body, and the like. In doing so they contradicted sense perception, reason, and revelation alike, treating what exists merely in the mind as though it were established in concrete reality. All of this stems from various kinds of confusion.