Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/187

 of a thing, its genus, differentia, and all its essential characteristics, and is thus distinct from mere description, which need only give the propria and accidents in such a way that the thing may be recognised correctly.

In dealing with the universal and the particular he considers that the universal exists only in the human mind: the abstract idea of the genus is formed in the mind of the observer when he compares individuals and makes note of their points of similarity, but this abstract idea exists only as a mental concept and has no objective reality. The universal precedes the individual (genus ante res) only in the way that the general idea existed in the mind of the Creator before the individual was formed, just as the idea of an object to be made exists in the mind of the artificer before the work is executed. The general idea is realised in matter (genus in rebus), but only when accompanied by accidents: apart from these accidents it exists only as a mental abstraction. After the general idea is realised in matter (genus post res) it is possible for the intellect to make a mental abstraction and to use this as a standard of comparison with other individuals. The generic belongs only to the realm of thought, and such abstract ideas have no objective existence, although they may be used as real in logic.

The soul is treated as a collection of faculties (kowa) or forces acting on the body: all activity of any sort, in bodies animal or vegetable, as well as human, proceeds either from such forces added to