Likewise, the term ‘animal’ encompasses both humans and beasts, despite the difference between their realities. This applies all the more to the term ‘existence’. These differing realities may share a general meaning that encompasses them, with the term denoting that meaning, as with the term ‘color’. Then, when qualified, it encompasses what is specific to each, as when one says, ‘the color of a black thing’ and ‘the color of a white thing’, or ‘the Lord’s existence’ and ‘the servant’s existence’.

If one uses a general term encompassing its individual instances, such as ‘color’, ‘colors’, ‘animal’, ‘accident’, or ‘existence’, it encompasses everything falling within its scope, even if these have differing realities. This is because the term encompasses them, just like other general terms, even though their individual instances differ in a respect other than that denoted by the general term.

Furthermore, regarding his statement, ‘If what the term “existence” denotes is an attribute, then, if the concept is the same for the necessary and the contingent, it follows that the necessary is contingent and the contingent necessary; otherwise, equivocation follows,’ the response is:

Do you mean that the term denotes unrestricted existence, or existence qualified by attribution, as when one says, ‘the existence of the necessary’ and ‘the existence of the contingent’? If you mean the former, then the concept is one and the same, but this does not entail that the two instances are alike. Even if the meaning of existence in the mind is alike in both cases, it does not follow that its instances in external reality are alike.