For universality is not predicated of them while it remains universal; it is predicated of them only once universality is removed. If someone says that the concept is “general and shared,” insisting that the subject of division is common to its branches and that generality holds true of both species and individuals, such “generality” is not the natural universal. Generality pertains only to what is characterized by multiplicity—something that can be divided and counted—and this is not the natural universal. Rather, the general is the intellectual universal, which does indeed encompass species and individuals and is rightly predicated of them. Yet the moment it encompasses concrete particulars it ceases to be universal, just as we say that the natural universal exists outside the mind even though, once it is outside, it is no longer universal. Whatever was absolute and universal in the intellect has no extra-mental counterpart identical to it in every respect; outside the mind it appears as a determinate particular. The same applies to every mental content: when we say that it exists in external reality, it exists in the mind only in a manner proportionate to that reality—just as one says, “I acted on what was in my mind,” or “I spoke what was in my mind.” In the soul this is merely a conception of the thing accompanied by the will to realize it.