Maybe the world wasn’t made of universals that could be summed up in neat little packages. Maybe there were just people. People who were tired and hurt and lonely and kind in their own way and their own time.
In one sense 'there are' both universals and material objects, in another sense there is no such thing as either: statements about each can usually be analysed, but not always, nor always without remainder.
For bundles of universals can be in more than one place at the same time; so a bundle can have more than one instance; so there can be numerically distinct particulars sharing the same universals; so the principle of identity of indiscernibles is false.
Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.
University students are rarely able to cope with universals and death is the most embarrassing universal.
No human society, present or past, has lacked music. Music is therefore one of the very few human universals, which puts it on the same level as food and sex.
If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals.
Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.
