is something outside (1) what is denoted by existence, thereby requiring you to posit another reality?”

This is analogous to saying that two human beings share in what is denoted by humanity, while one is distinguished from the other by a further particularity: the distinguishing factor would be the humanity particular to that person. There would be no need to make the distinguishing factor something other than humanity, with humanity inhering in it as an accident.

However, these people suppose that species sharing in a universal can be differentiated only by different underlying matter. This issue involves an extensive discussion of the logicians’ errors concerning universals, their classification of universals, the construction of definitions from essential attributes and other elements, the premises of syllogisms, the distinction between certain and non-certain syllogisms, and other matters—all of which has been set out elsewhere.

Third: It may be said: When we say, “The two existing things share in what is denoted by existence, and one of them must be distinguished from the other,” we do not mean that they share in one and the same thing existing in external reality, for that is impossible. Rather, we mean that they agree in it and resemble one another in this respect. That which they share is one and the same only in the mind, not in external reality. In external reality, however, the one does not share in the other’s very existence.

Accordingly, when we say that the term “existence” (2) belongs among the general, universal terms that are either univocal or subject to gradation—terms of the latter kind being univocal terms whose meanings differ in degree rather than being identical, despite agreeing in their basic denotation—such as “whiteness,” as predicated of the intense whiteness of snow and the whiteness of