Full Idea
Beasts recognise whiteness, but this does not amount to abstraction, which requires attention to the general apart from the particular, and consequently involves knowledge of universal truths.
Gist of Idea
Abstraction attends to the general, not the particular, and involves universal truths
Source
Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.11)
Book Reference
Leibniz,Gottfried: 'New Essays on Human Understanding', ed/tr. Remnant/Bennett [CUP 1996], p.142
A Reaction
I'm not sure where 'truth' creeps into this. I might hallucinate pink elephants, and abstract the general notion of pink from them. Nevertheless, the features picked out in abstraction tend to be the shared features.