tode ti, or toionde ti, as Aristotle would say, the former expressing some particular substance, as 'this steam,' the latter some particular quality, as 'the whiteness of these washed garments.'
The argument lies open to this difficulty. -- Effects answer proportionally to their causes: but 'being, simply as such,' is an abstract effect: therefore it answers to an abstract cause: which argues the Creator to be an abstract Being: now abstract Being is mere mental fiction. -- St Thomas would not admit this Nominalist position, that abstract Being is mere mental fiction. Force, Energy, Work, Life, surely are not mere mental fictions, and yet they are abstract beings. Abstract Being does not exist as abstract: it is a reality in these and these particulars. St Thomas, in one place, if indeed the argument is really his, calls God an abstract Being: see B. I, Chap. XLII, n. 13, with note. He means that God is a Being of ideal perfection. God is ideal Being, actualised: He is the actuality of ideality.
Of God and His Creatures: 2.21