Yet that paltry existent is distinguished from it by a positive reality, and existence is better than non-existence; thus the feature by which that insignificant being is set apart is better than the negative description with which they have characterized, as they claim, the Necessary Existent. I have expanded on this elsewhere, demonstrating that what they affirm and label the Necessary Existent is in fact impossible in reality; it is entertained only in the mind, just as other impossibilities are mentally posited.

The point here is that, in many of their so-called demonstrative inquiries into rational matters, they put forward notions they have merely concocted in their own minds. They say, “We are speaking about universals and pure intelligibles.” When something particular is mentioned to them, they reply, “We are discussing something broader than that—the reality in and of itself,” and similar phrases. They are then asked to substantiate what they have claimed in the external world: “Sirs, what exactly is this?” Thereupon their ignorance becomes evident, and it is seen that what they speak of is a mental fiction with no existence in concrete reality. It is like someone asking them for an example—an example being necessarily particular. If they fail to provide one and protest, “We are concerned with universals,” know that they are speaking without knowledge, about something for which they have no known external referent, indeed about something that may have no referent at all and may even be impossible to have one. True knowledge of existing things, even when expressed universally, must have actual instances outside the mind.

By the term “universal” (kullī) they mean that whose conception does not preclude its predicates being shared by many. Such a universal may be impossible in the external world, like a partner for the Creator; it may be non-existent yet mentally imagined, like Aristotle’s “goat-stag”; or it may exist in reality while admitting no multiplicity, though multiplicity is in principle possible. They illustrate this last case with the terms “God” and “sun,” treating the signified notion as universal because the mere concept does not forbid multiplicity, which is barred only by an external factor. Thus the species is restricted to a single individual, not simply by virtue of the concept itself—this is well known among them.

This, however, is valid only if the words “God” and “sun” are taken as common nouns, so that they do not denote the specific, well-known deity or the particular sun, for the universal in their view is like—