is something akin to existence, upon which the forms of bodies successively occur. Yet, upon examination, it amounts to a mental construct with no reality outside the mind. Likewise, he imagined that the realities of universal species subsist in external particulars while being distinct from them.

All this arises because the mind abstracts intelligible concepts from what is perceived by the senses. These intelligible concepts are universals subsisting in the mind, which subjects them to successive acts of abstraction: it abstracts numbers from the things counted, species from individuals, and magnitudes from the things measured. Its abstraction of the five universals belongs to this same process.

Anyone who imagines that these abstractions are entities subsisting outside the mind is like someone who sees an image in a mirror and supposes that the image he sees in the mirror exists outside it. He then tries to touch or reach it, just as he would reach a form perceived by the senses, but finds nothing.

There is no doubt that these people, and all other disbelievers, are as Allah Most High describes:

“And those who disbelieve—their deeds are like a mirage on a level plain, which a thirsty man mistakes for water, until, when he reaches it, he finds nothing there, but finds Allah there, who settles his account in full. And Allah is swift in reckoning. {39} Or like layers of darkness in a deep sea, covered by a wave, above which is another wave, above which are clouds—layers of darkness