The philosophers, along with all other rational people, agree on this. They say: “What comes first in an undertaking comes last in its execution, and what is first sought is last attained.” They also say: “The final cause is first in conception but last in existence.”

Most rational people say that what comes first is the conception of the final cause and the will to attain it. Ibn Sīnā and philosophers like him, however, say: “Rather, the cause itself comes first in the mind.” They also say: “The final cause is an efficient cause of the efficient cause.”

Most rational people do not regard it as an efficient cause. Rather, they say that the agent becomes an agent through conceiving it and willing it. Were it not for his conception of the end and his will to attain it, he would not be an agent. Thus, conceiving it and willing it are conditions of his being an agent. It comes first in conception and will, even though it comes last in existence.

In short, a rational agent acting by his own choice conceives within himself what he wishes to do, then brings it into existence externally. The form that exists externally through his action is not the intelligible form in his mind. Someone who wishes to make a triangular or square shape, compose a sermon, build a house, plant trees, or travel to a city first conceives what he wishes to do. It therefore has an intellectual form within him before its form exists externally. This is the meaning of their saying, “What is first sought is last attained”: the first thing you seek, and therefore will and pursue, is the last thing you attain and obtain.