particular thing that is itself universal. Rather, universality belongs to the kind, as animality applies universally to animals and humanity to human beings.

Thus, the questions of universals and states, and of attributing universality (1) to things other than words, all belong to the same class. Whoever understands the matter as it truly is will realize that nothing in external reality exists, in its very self, in both this and that.

If someone says, “Its kind exists,” “The natural universal (2) exists,” “The essence exists,” or “Humanity, considered in itself, exists,” and makes other such statements, what is meant (3) is that in one thing there is a counterpart to what is found in another, or something resembling it (4), equivalent to it, or the like.

Two similar things are united (5) by a single kind. That very kind applies universally to each of them, but it possesses absolute, universal generality only in the mind.

Thus, if you say, “Humanity exists in external reality, and the natural universal exists in external reality,” this is correct in the sense that what the mind conceives universally exists in external reality. Yet when it exists in external reality, it is not universal. Similarly, if you say, “Zayd exists in external reality,” what is meant is neither this expression nor the meaning subsisting in the mind. Rather, what is meant is that the referent of this expression exists in external reality.