the first cause...

the first cause, the secondary cause, and the active intellect, are neither bodies nor are they contained in bodies. The other three: soul, form and matter are not bodies, but exist in bodies. As for bodies, they are of six types: the heavenly bodies, rational animals, irrational animals, plants, minerals and the four elements. All these six bodies as a whole form the universe.

The first to be believed in is God, the Almighty, who is the immediate cause of the existence of the secondary causes and the active intellect. The secondary causes are the causes of the existence of heavenly bodies and their substance. The secondary causes should be called the spirits, the angels, and so on. The function of the active intellect is to attend the rational animal, man, and to enable him to attain the highest perfection he can reach.

The highest perfect of man consists in his highest happiness which he achieves when he raises himself to the stage of the active intellect by abstracting himself from bodies, matter, and accidents, and continues to enjoy this perfection perpetually. In essence, the active intellect is one but in gradation it includes all that is purified from the rational animal and attains to happiness.

The active intellect should be called the Holy Spirit (al-ruh al-Amin or al-Ruh al-Qudus) or the like and its grades be called the spiritual realm (al-malakut) or the like. Souls have three grades: souls of celestial bodies, souls of the rational animal, and souls of the irrational animals. The souls of the rational animal are the rational faculty, the appetitive faculty, the imaginative faculty, and the perceiving faculty.

The rational faculty equips man with sciences and arts, and enables him to distinguish good from evil manners and actions.

Through this faculty man inclines to do good and avoid evil and realizes the useful, the harmful, the pleasant and the unpleasant.[^10] The rational faculty is either speculative or practical; the first is that through which man obtains the knowledge of all that he is not at all supposed to know by his own effort, and the second is that through which he knows all that he can know if he wills it so.

The second is again divided into that through which arts and crafts are obtained (mahaniyyah) , and that through which imagination and insight concerning doing or not doing a thing are achieved (marwiyyah) .