realities existing outside the mind are composed of particular and general attributes, nor that some of their inseparable attributes are internal to their reality and essential to it, while others are external to their reality and accidental to it, as the proponents of Greek logic claim. This is one of the matters in which they went astray, and their error led astray those groups of speculative thinkers who followed them in it. They were also blindly followed in this by those who neither understood the true meaning and implications of their position nor conceived it fully.

If by composition they mean that a human being possesses life and rationality—with one attribute having counterparts in other animals and the other being specific to human beings—then this is a sound meaning. But if they mean that his animality is shared between him and others, they are mistaken. The animality of each animal is like the rationality of each rational being: each is particular to the subject in which it inheres.

Likewise, if by composition they mean that there is an existent described as an animal distinct from the existent described as rational or as neighing, and that a human being is composed of this existent and that existent, and a horse is composed of this existent and that existent, then they are mistaken. Rather, nothing exists here except this human being, described as a rational animal, and this horse, described as a neighing animal. The same applies to all other animals and existent things.

Thus, if someone’s statement, “A human being is composed of this and that,” is intended to mean that there is something