One nation can be distinguished from another by natural character...

One nation can be distinguished from another by natural character, temperament, habits, and language.[^4] Human societies are either perfect or imperfect. The perfect society may be great, middling, or small. The great human society is the one consisting of several nations uniting themselves in one unity and helping one another.

The middling one is the society of one nation in a part of the world, and the small is the society of the people of a city.[^5] The imperfect society is that of the people of a village, a locality, a lane, or a house, the last being the smallest. Now, the highest good and perfection are primarily achieved through volition and will. Similarly, evil finds its scope by volition and will.

The City-State can, therefore, develop by mutual help and efforts to attain some evil purpose or to attain happiness.

The city in which the members of the society co-operate to attain happiness is in reality the ideal City-State (al-madinat al-fadilah) , the society, the ideal society, and the nation.[^6] In this State the citizens help one another to achieve qualities of the greatest life perpetually.[^7] But if they help one another to obtain the bare necessities of life and its preservation, this City-State is evidently the necessary State.

^8 How to Achieve Happiness Al-Farabi speaks of happiness both of this world and hereafter. He explains that when human factors or the four excellences – speculative virtues (al-jada’il al-nazariyyah) , theoretical virtues (jada’il al-fikriyyah) , the moral virtues (fada’il al-khuluqiyyah) , and the practical arts (al-sana‘at al-‘amaliyyah) – form the qualities of a nation or of the people of a city, their worldly happiness in this life and the lasting happiness in the next are insured.

Speculative virtues (al-fuda’il al-nazariyyah) represent those sciences which aim at the highest object, knowledge of existing things including all their requirements.

These sciences are either innate in man, or they are achieved by effort and learning.[^9] Now, the principal factors of existing bodies and accidents, as explained by al-Farabi, are of six kinds with six grades: The first cause in the first grade, the secondary causes in the second grade, active intellect in the third grade, soul in the fourth grade, form in the fifth grade, and matter in the sixth grade. The first grade is confined to one individual only; it cannot have more than one.

But other grades can have more than one occupant. Out of this six, three, viz.