Abstract

The discussion of the natural universal is directly related to the discussions related to the principiality of quiddity or existence. Believing in the principiality of quiddity is in fact the same as believing in the existence by essence and the natural independent universal in the outside, while the pricipiality of existence is inconsistent with any belief in the real existent and the natural and original universal.In this article, the writer does not intend to study the reasons related to the principiality of quiddity or existence; rather, he intends to justify multiplicity on the basis of the principiality of existence and clarify the relation between the theory of natural universal and the principiality of existence. Following this issue, the author poses these questions: If the reality of principiality in the outside belongs to existence and quiddity is considered as its limit and end and is a mental abstraction, "What is the basis of this abstraction?" and "How is it that this abstraction emerges in mind sometimes as an essential classification and sometimes as the different grades and levels of existence?".The most important divisions in the gradation of existence are vertical and horizontal gradations. In the vertical gradation, due to the unity of the criteria for difference and commonality, a unitary entity emerges at different grades. On the other hand, at the level of one, where there is no word of intensity or weakness, existence will possess some kind of multiplicity which our mind perceives in the form of different quiddities.Here the question is why the existence at the level of one, for example the level of inanimate things, is exposed to a kind of multiplicity which has no unity with the issue of the grades and levels of existence. The philosophers have provided different replies to this question which the author has extensively discussed in the article.