Universal and Particular

Universals are Forms: separately existing, eternal objects that give particular things their nature and make definition and science possible.

Universals exist only in particular things: the form of man is real, but it exists only in particular human beings and is abstracted from them by the intellect.

Universals exist in three ways: before things in the divine mind, in things as their forms, and after things in the human intellect — each a legitimate perspective on the same reality.

There is nothing universal in the world; universals are only names, and the whole controversy about them is, at bottom, a dispute about words.

General terms correspond to abstract general ideas, which are particular ideas with their individual features removed; these ideas are the work of the understanding, not objects existing outside the mind.

There are no abstract general ideas; all ideas are particular, and general terms work by standing for any particular idea of the relevant kind when we need it.

General terms are attached to particular ideas by custom; resemblance among particulars, stored as a habit in the mind, does the work that abstract ideas were invented to do.

The categories of the pure understanding are universal and necessary concepts that the mind brings to experience; without them, no particular could be recognized as an instance of any kind.

Real kinds in nature make some general classifications more than merely nominal; induction discovers real universals, but they exist only as uniformities in nature, not as independent entities.