Tahafut_al-Tahafut-transl-Engl-van-den-Bergh

(which is the rational soul), and therefore the soul cannot
have a position or be pointed at or have a size, for if it had all
these things what inheres in it would also possess them. z
And the objection is that the idea of a universal which you
philosophers assume as existing in the intellect is not
accepted by us. ; According to us nothing inheres in the
intellect but what inheres in the senses, only it inheres in the
senses as an aggregate which they cannot separate,
whereas the intellect is able to do so. Further, when it is
separated, the single part separated from its attachments is
just as much an individual in the intellect as the aggregate
with its attachments, only this invariable part’ in the mind is
related to the thing thought oft and to similar things by one
single relation, and in this way it is said to be a universal. For
there is in the intellect the forma of the individual thing
thought of which is first perceived by the senses, and the
relation of this form to all the individuals of this genus which
the senses perceive is one and the same. If, after seeing
one man, someone sees another, no new form occurs to
him, as happens when he sees a horse after seeing a man,
for then two different forms occur in him. A similar thing
happens to the senses themselves, for when a man sees
water, one form occurs in his imagination, and if he sees
blood afterwards, another form occurs, but if he sees
another water, no other form occurs, but the form of the
water which is impressed on his imagination is an image for
all individual stretches of water, and for this reason it is often
thought to be a universal.
And in the same way, when for instance he sees a hand,
there occurs in his imagination and in his intellect the natural
position of its parts, namely the surface of the hand and the
division of the fingers in it and the ending of the fingers in the
nails, and besides this there occur to him the smallness or
bigness of the hand and its colour, and if he sees another
hand which resembles the first in everything, no other new
form occurs to him; no, this second observation, when a new
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