  Albert carefully prepared a paraphrase of Aristotle’s Organon (the logical treatises in the Aristotelian corpus). He then used the results of this paraphrase to address the problem of universals as he found it discussed in the philosophical literature and debates of the medieval philosophical culture. He defined the term universal as referring to “ … that which, although it  exists in one, is apt by nature to exist in  many.”[1]  Because it is apt to be in many, it is predicable of them. (De praed., tract II, c. 1) He then distinguished three kinds of universals, those that pre-exist the things that exemplify them  (universale ante rem),  those that exist in individual things (universale in re),  and those that exist in the mind when abstracted from individual things  (universale post rem).