As for absolute meanings without any condition, if they are said to exist in external reality, they exist only as determinate, distinct, particular entities. A determinate, particular entity falls within the absolute without any condition, but not within the absolute subject to the condition of absoluteness, since the former is more general. The existence in external reality of the absolute without any condition does not entail the existence there of the absolute subject to the condition of absoluteness, because the latter is more restricted.

Thus, when we speak of an animal, a human being, a body, or existence in an absolute sense, if we mean the absolute subject to the condition of absoluteness, it has no existence in external reality. If we mean the absolute without any condition, it exists only as something determinate and particular. Nothing exists in external reality except as something determinate and distinct, separate from everything else by its defining limits and its reality.

Whoever says that the existence of the Real is absolute existence rather than determinate existence is, in effect, saying that the Real has no existence at all, nor any reality other than the individual, distinct things themselves. Yet those individual things are not Him; thus, He is nothing at all.

The essential point may be summarized as follows: if he means the absolute subject to the condition of absoluteness, it has no existence in external reality, and so the Real would have no existence at all. If he means the absolute without any condition, then, if it is said not to exist in external reality, there is nothing further to discuss. If it is said to exist, however, it exists only as something determinate, and so the Real would have no existence other than the existence of individual entities. Two unacceptable consequences therefore follow. (The first is that the Real has no existence other than the existence of created things. The second is the contradiction in his statement that He is absolute existence rather than determinate existence.