Full Idea
When thinking is taken as active with regard to ob-jects, as the thinking-over of something, then the universal - as the product of the activity - contains the value of the matter, what is essential, inner, true.
Gist of Idea
Active thought about objects produces the universal, which is what is true and essential of it
Source
Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §21)
Book Reference
Hegel,Georg W.F.: 'The Hegel Reader', ed/tr. Houlgate,Stephen [Blackwell 1998], p.141
A Reaction
I prefer to talk of 'general terms' rather than 'universals'. If 'tiger' is coined for the first one, but must be applicable to subsequent tigers, it has to generalise what they all have in common. Locke's 'nominal' essence, I would say.