Their intent, then, is the division of a whole into its constituent parts: speech is made up of noun, verb, and particle just as a house is made up of roof, walls, and floor, and as the human body is composed of head, chest, abdomen, thighs, and so on.
Thus their statement, “Speech is divided into three parts,” was meant as this very sort of division—just as one might say, “The house is divided into lower and upper stories,” or “This land is divided into a barren tract and a wooded tract,” and the like. This is the kind of division familiar to human beings, for it partitions things that possess an objective reality: either a substance, such as real estate, or an accident inhering in a substance, such as speech, sounds, and colors.
The other kind of division occurs only after the intellect abstracts from particulars a universal, common notion and then subdivides it into its species and their individual instances. This is the division that applies to the five universals they speak of—genus, differentia, species, proprium, and common accident.
If, then, the subject of what they call “First Philosophy” and the “supreme wisdom” is the absolute, universal existence that encompasses every existent, both its wording and its meaning cover all things that exist. Likewise, the terms “subsistence,” “thing,” and similar expressions correspond to the term “existence” in the view of most theoreticians.
The utmost that the word “existence” can signify, therefore, is the same as what is meant by “thing,” “subsistence,” “occurrence,” and the like. Such a notion is not something that exists outside the mind, so that one could say it is either suited to the soul or unsuited to it. The matter is quite different when one speaks of “the Necessary Existent,” “Lord of the Worlds,” or “Creator of the universe,” for the referent of these names truly exists in Himself—glorified and exalted be He—He is the Ever-Living, the Self-Subsisting, the Lord and Sovereign of all things. When the soul knows Him, it perceives that its perfection lies in knowing and worshipping Him. Exalted is He, the Most High; knowledge of Him is the loftiest of all knowledge, for knowledge accords with the reality that is known.
As for the general, shared notion of existence—like the term “thing”—it exists universally only in