Book Four, chapter 1

1The first chapter of it

2Know, O you who consider [this], that the philosophers have agreed that the Creator, the Exalted, originated five substances, and placed some of them above others, and made the higher more excellent than that which is beneath it and bestowing upon it wisdom, the virtues and light. These five are: first matter, which is the upper world and the first form, and it is the first element; then the intellect; then the soul; then nature, which is heaven; then the corporeal element, which is the bodily element.

3So He placed first matter on the horizon of His Throne, there is no god but He, glory be to Him and exalted is He, and made it draw light, wisdom and the virtues from Him by powers from Him akin to it, conveying that to it. And He placed the intellect on the horizon of first matter, drawing light, wisdom and the virtues from it through powers from it conformable to it, which impel that to it. And He placed the Soul on the horizon of the Intellect, drawing light, wisdom and the virtues from it through powers from it conformable to it, which pour that forth upon it.

4And He placed Nature on the horizon of the Soul, drawing light, wisdom and the virtues from it through powers from it conformable to it, which impel that to it. So first matter is nobler, finer and subtler than the Intellect, and the Intellect is nobler, finer and subtler than the Soul, and the Soul is nobler, subtler and finer than Nature, and Nature is nobler, finer and subtler than the Element.

5And He made what each substance impels to what is below it [go] in many successive impulses, not a single impulse: it impels the densest of what it has, so as to be conformable to what is beneath it, and so that its subtlest may remain, in order that the impelled may long for the impeller, and need it, and love it passionately, and not forget it.

6Then He originated the spheres and the forms, and He placed the sphere of the Soul between four spheres: two spheres above it, luminous, excellent, refined, and they are first matter and the Intellect; and two spheres beneath it, dark, base, joined, and they are Nature and the Element.

7So the soul over which the two upper ones prevail is luminous, excellent, happy; its destination and its resting-place is the highest Paradise, from which it was sent forth and from which it drew. And the soul over which the two lower ones prevail is dark, base, wretched; its destination and its resting-place is the lowest Fire, from which it was sent forth and from which it drew.

8And He also originated a bestial, vegetative and mineral soul, which does not draw from intellect nor from upper matter, because He did not grant it that, since its two lower spheres, Nature and the Element, prevailed over it. So its destination and its resting-place is the dust from which it was sent forth and from which it drew. All that is by the decree of the Mighty, the Knowing.

9And the example of that is that trees and all plants: their first is their seed, their root and their roots, and their last is their branch and their boughs, because the vegetative soul is only in the lower part of the plant; and it draws from the earth with its roots and from the air with its branches, and that whose supply is greater prevails. So when the supply of the earth is greater, the prevailing is downward more than upward, in shortness and breadth, and conversely.

10The proof of that is that we find among plants one whose roots are longer than its boughs, and one whose boughs are longer than its roots; and we find one whose roots have dried while its boughs have not dried, and one whose boughs have dried while its roots have not dried. And likewise the bird: when its nourishment is more of the earth, its flight upward is less, and when its nourishment is more of the air, it is higher in rising.

11And likewise this human being: when his food is subtle, he is nearer to the embodied [reading uncertain] and attains more of the simple spiritual things; and when his food is coarse, he is nearer to the embodied and attains more of the earthly things and is further from attaining the spiritual things. So evil comes only from the side of the bodies, and good comes only from the side of the spiritual.

12Then we return to what we were engaged in, and we say: substance, besides this, is divided into two divisions, spiritual and bodily. The spiritual is first matter, which is the upper world, and the first form, which is the first spiritual element, and the Intellect, the Soul, Nature and the Element, and all the principles, and the first genera which have no species, and the first units which are not divided, such as the one, the instant and the point, and the like among what is not divided; because the instant is the beginning of time and the point is the beginning of the line.

13And bodily substance is what is compounded, such as fire, air, water and earth, and animals, plants and minerals. And substance is also simple and compound: the simple is what is above the sphere and is not perceived by the outward senses, and the composite is what is beneath the sphere and is perceived by the outward senses.

14And the sage Empedocles said: Every substance that is perceived by the five outward, bodily senses is a substance, a body, purely corporeal, composite, perishing, corruptible, because place encloses it and limits reach it. And every substance that the five outward senses do not perceive, but the five inward, spiritual senses perceive, is a body, a substance, spiritual, simple, pure, abiding in the light of lordship for ever; it does not decay and is not corrupted, because no place encloses it and no limit reaches it.

15And every substance that some of the outward senses perceive is a body between the simple spiritual and the composite corporeal: what of it is corporeal joins the corporeal things and decays with them, such as temporal motion and the colours; and what of them is spiritual, such as brightness and light, joins the higher spiritual power (rūḥāniyya), unites with it and abides. So strive, O you who study this book of mine, to join your soul to the ranks of the blessed spiritual ones; and that is by your inclining towards the spiritual side by which you differ from all the beasts, and that is the intellectual faculty.

16And know that concerning the reality of the intellect and its divisions the ancients and the moderns have differed. It is applied equivocally to four meanings. The first is the quality by which man differs from all the beasts; it is that which is prepared to receive the theoretical sciences and the governance of the hidden, reflective crafts. It is an innate disposition by which the perception of the theoretical sciences is made ready, and it is as though it were a light which God casts into the heart, by which [one] is prepared to perceive things.

17This is the view of some of the theologians (mutakallimūn). And whoever denied this and reduced the intellect to the mere necessary theoretical sciences has not been fair, for the one heedless of the sciences and the sleeper are both called possessed of intellect in view of the presence of this innate disposition together with the lack of the sciences.

18The second division is the sciences that come forth into existence in the essence of the discerning child, of the possibility of possible things and the impossibility of impossible things, such as the knowledge that two is more than one, and that a person does not occupy two places at one time. This is the division which some of the theologians meant, but they denied the first division.

19The third is sciences that are acquired from experiences through the course of circumstances; for whoever has become seasoned is said, in customary usage, to be possessed of intellect, and whoever is not characterised by that is said to be dull, ignorant, inexperienced.

20The fourth is that that innate power reaches the point where [one] knows the outcomes of affairs and subdues the desire that calls to immediate pleasure and passes beyond it. When this power is attained, its possessor is called possessed of intellect, inasmuch as his going forward and his holding back accord with what reflection on outcomes requires, not with the rule of immediate desire. And this is among the properties of man by which he is distinguished from all the animals.

21So the first is the foundation and the source; the second is the branch nearest to it; the third is a branch of the first and the second, since by the power of the innate disposition and the necessary sciences the sciences of experience are acquired; and the fourth is the fruit and the goal sought. So the first two are by nature and the last two by acquisition. And therefore the Imam 'Alī, may God honour his face, said:

22I saw the intellect as two intellects: the inborn and the heard. And the heard does not profit if there is no inborn, just as the sun does not profit when the light of the eye is withheld.

23And the first is what is meant by the saying of the Lawgiver: "When people draw near through the gates of piety, draw near you through your intellect."

24And I command you and set before you what is higher in rank than what I have mentioned: know that the ancients divided it into six divisions, and two expressions comprise them: the universal intellect and the intellect of the All, just as they said the universal soul and the soul of the All. The explanation of that is that existing things, according to them, are of three divisions: bodies, and they are the basest of them; and active intellects, and they are the noblest of them, because of their freedom from matter and from attachment to matter, so that they do not move the materials either, except through desire;

25and the middle of them are the souls, and they are what is acted upon by the intellect and acts upon the bodies, and they are intermediary. And by the heavenly angels they mean the souls of the spheres, for these are living according to them; and by the angels brought near [they mean] the active intellects.

26So by the universal intellect they mean the intelligible that is predicated of many things differing in number, among the intellects that belong to the individuals of mankind, and it has no existence in subsistence and conception [sense uncertain]. For when you say "the universal man", you point by it to the intelligible notion of man in all the individuals, which is, for the intellect, one form corresponding to all the individuals of mankind;

27and there is no existence of one humanity which is the humanity of Zayd and is itself the humanity of 'Amr; but the intellect obtains the form of man from the individual Zayd, for example, and it corresponds to all the individuals of mankind, all of them, and that is called the universal man. So this is what is meant by the universal intellect.

28As for the intellect of the All, it is applied in two senses. One of them, and it is the more suited to the word, [is that of] one who means by "the All" the totality of the world; and the intellect of the All is said in this sense. So the meaning of the explanation of its name is that it is the totality of the essences stripped of matter in every respect, which move neither through [their] essences nor by accident, and move only through desire. The last rank of this totality is the active intellect, which brings human souls out from potentiality to actuality in the intellectual sciences. And this totality is the principles of the All after the First Principle, and the First Principle is the Originator of the All.

29As for the All in the second sense, it is the outermost body, I mean the ninth sphere, which revolves in a day and a night, and by its motion everything that is its filling, of all the heavens, is moved. So its body is called the body of the All and its motion the motion of the All. It is the greatest of created things, and it is what is meant by the Throne according to them.

30So the intellect of the All in this sense is a substance stripped of matter in every respect, and it is the mover of the motion of the All by way of arousing desire for itself, and its existence is the first existence derived from the First. And it is what is meant by the saying of the Lawgiver: "The first thing God created was the intellect, and He said to it: Come forward, and it came forward."

31As for the universal soul, what is meant by it is the notion predicated of many things differing in number in answer to "what is the thing?", each one of which is a soul proper to the individual, as we mentioned concerning the universal intellect. And the soul of the All, on the analogy of the intellect of the All, [means] the totality of the incorporeal substances which are perfections, the principle of the celestial bodies, moving them by way of intellectual choice.

32And the relation of the soul of the All to the intellect of the All is like the relation of our souls to the active intellect. And the soul of the All is a proximate principle for the existence of natural bodies, and its rank in attaining existence is after the rank of the intellect of the All, and its existence emanates from its existence. So this is the cream of what they have mentioned concerning the intellect.

33And the Philosopher, Aristotle, claimed that the intellect is not united with the body, and that the soul is united with the body. If it is said, "How does the soul understand?", the answer is that the rational soul looks up toward the light of the intellect when it wishes to know something; and when it receives that light it rejoices in it and apprehends what it loved. And the passage of this light is over all the senses, and the proof of that is that when the senses are affected by sleep, the soul does not intellect anything. If it is said that he perhaps intellects a little in his sleep, the answer is that a remnant of it remains, just as heat remains in one who has been killed when the lamp has been extinguished. And because of its union with the body, defining it is permissible according to some of them. And Empedocles claimed that the intellect is not defined, because it is a simple substance, and the simple substance has no genus, nor species, nor differentia, because it is not divided; and the subsistence of the definition is by genus, species and differentia.

34And he mentioned that the intellect is two intellects: a universal one, in which all things are potentially, which does not perish and does not suffer pain, and it is all things by its essence, and it is before time and on its horizon — and it is said that it is with it [pronoun ambiguous: time?], not preceding it by the blink of an eye; and an acquired intellect, which perishes and suffers pain, is found only in the body of man, perishes with his perishing and suffers pain with his suffering; and it is a light from the light of the universal intellect.

35And [he mentioned] that the soul is not defined, because it is a simple substance, and every simple substance is not divided, and what is not divided has no genus, and what has no genus has no species, and what has no species has no differentia; and the subsistence of the definition is by genus, species and differentia, so what has no genus is not defined. But the soul is defined, even though it is a simple substance, because it has become united with the body and composed by the light of the intellect. Then he mentioned that the soul is a simple, all-knowing power that perceives things in their essence; then he mentioned that it is a composite substance.

36And Aristotle refuted this in the presence of Plato and said: every composite may be dissolved, and what is dissolved may corrupt; and he had mentioned that it is simple, so how can it be compounded? But Empedocles meant by the first a definition and by the second a description, and his saying "composite" [means] by the light of the intellect, not in its essence. And Plato and Sarīṭūs conceded the statement of Empedocles.

37And he also said: the soul is a simple substance that receives the forms of all things, their shapes and their colours, and they are found in it potentially, and it completes them [reading uncertain]. Then he said: and know that the soul is united with the body, not imprinted in it, and the senses are imprinted in it, not united; and everything imprinted cannot separate from that in which it is imprinted, and everything united can separate from that in which it is united; and everything imprinted in a thing is only acted upon, receptive of effects, and everything united is an agent, knowing the effects; and everything receptive is subject to pains and perishes, just as what cannot do without food passes away and what can do without it endures.

38And it is a power subsisting by itself, purifying the body in which it is, renewing it and giving it life, living, perpetually in motion, a spirit from the spirit of God the Exalted. He originated it and the intellect without intermediary and planted them in these bodies in which they are; so they are, in relation to the bodies, like the light of the Sun in relation to it. And rays issue from it to the body and are arranged in the structure of nature according to the measure of its actions; among them are sensation, opinion, imagination, memory, thought and the like.

39As for the excellent sage Aristotle, he said: the definition of the soul is that it is the perfection of a natural, organic body having life potentially. He specified it by "natural" to exclude the artificial body; and his saying "organic", because it is included among the dead bodies which are in generation and corruption, since they need nourishment; and his saying "potentially", that is, what has not entered under present act. And in the commentary on his Book of the Soul by one of them [it is said] that it is the formal cause of the breathing body, and by the soul it is breathing, nourished, sensing.

40And Plato claimed that the soul is an intellectual substance moving of itself according to a number possessing composition. And he said in another place that the soul is a substance, not a body, moving the body, united with it, and by that union it is joined to the bodies and acts in them. And some of the ancients defined it as a nature perpetually in motion, and it is, together with that, the perfection of the active body, living potentially.

41We have brought you, O reader, what we have brought of the discourse on the soul and the intellect and their quiddity only to open a road for you and to make you aware, so that your reflection and your inquiry may be directed only to the knowledge of them, that you may win eternal life and cast away what is beneath that, since attaining that is the utmost goal of perception. So know that, and be certain that between what you seek and what I have urged you towards there is a very great distance. For that which you aim at is a shadow standing between your intellect and the Intellect of the All, and preventing it [pronoun ambiguous: your intellect] from receiving it and from being joined to it.

42That is because the meaning of shadow is the darkness of an object standing between the light of the Sun and the place facing it in front of the object; and that is at the Sun's declining and its return, or from its rising until the time of its station. And the Sun has, at the time of its station, a shadow in all the climes, according to the measure of the latitude and longitude of the countries; and the shadow in the country that has no latitude is, at the station, inverted on an object, because of shadow some is extended and some is inverted. This is mentioned in [the treatment of] the astrolabe and engraved on it. The example of the inverted [shadow] is when we set an object in the mukḥul [word uncertain] or the wall: this has a shadow at every time and in every country.

43So understand what I have pointed out to you, and reflect with a satisfying reflection, and consider with intense inquiry and ponder it; for I have not left [anything] to which I have not guided you. And God is the helper of me and of you and of all our brethren who inquire into these subtle, obscure sciences, hard to perceive.