REAL (realis), though always importing the existing, is used in various significations and oppositions:—1. As denoting the thing as contradistinguished from its name. 2. As expressing a something in contrast to a nothing. 3. As denoting material or external, in contrast to spiritual or internal. 4. As synonymous with actual, and thus as opposed either to the potential or to the possible. 5. As denoting absolute or irrespective, in opposition to relative or phenomenal existence. 6. As indicating existence as a subsistence in nature, as contradistinguished from existence taken as a representation in thought. 7. And lastly, a thing which really or in itself is one and indivisible, may nevertheless be logically and by the mind considered as diverse and plural, and vice versa. (For further illustration of the meaning of this word, see Hamilton's edition of Reid's Works, note B, p. 805.)