and yet the First Intellect (1), according to them, is incapable of this. And He said:

“Through you I take, through you I give, and through you reward is bestowed.”

This Intellect, according to them, (* is the lord of the entire universe; it is the originator of it all; and it is itself the effect of the First. Its role is not confined to four accidents; rather, according to them, it is *) (2) the originator of all substances: the higher and the lower, the sensible (3) and the intelligible.

In Muslim usage, intellect is either an accident subsisting in something else or a faculty within the soul (4). As for the verbal noun [aql (intellect)] (5), one says: aqala, yaqilu, aqlan (“he reasoned, he reasons, reasoning”). A rational person, however, is not called “the Intellect” in their usage.

In these people’s terminology, by contrast, the Intellect is a substance subsisting in itself. We have discussed this at length and explained the true nature of their position using rational and transmitted proofs. Upon close examination, what they posit as separate substances amounts to nothing more than things existing in the mind rather than in external reality—with the exception of the rational soul, though they have erred concerning some of its attributes (6).

These people hold that the universe is the effect of a cause that is eternal, beginningless, and necessarily existent, and that the universe is its necessary concomitant. In reality, however, their position amounts to saying that He is a final cause; that the celestial spheres move with a voluntary motion born of yearning, seeking to resemble Him; and that He moves them in the same way as does