The Virtuous City

Nor can He have existence in potentiality in any manner whatever, nor any possibility of not existing in any way at all. That is why He is eternal, everlasting in existence by His substance and essence, with no need, in order to be eternal, of anything else to sustain His continuance; rather, His substance suffices for His continuance and the permanence of His existence. There can be no existence at all like His existence, nor any existence at the same rank as His that anything could possess or attain.

Nor, again, did He acquire His existence from anything else prior to Him; and He is still further from having acquired it from something below Him.

This holds generally for everything that can have a contrary. If one thing is contrary to another in its action but not in its other states, then only their actions are of this description; if they are contrary in their qualities, their qualities are of this description; and if they are contrary in their substances, their substances are of this description. Now if the First had a contrary, He would stand to His contrary in this way. It would follow that each of them is by nature liable to perish, and that the First could be abolished by His contrary, and this in His very substance. But what can perish does not have its subsistence and continuance in its substance; its substance is not sufficient for it to remain in existence, nor, again, is its substance sufficient for it to come into existence; that comes about through something other than it.

Now what can fail to exist cannot be eternal; and whatever has a substance insufficient for its continuance or its existence has, for its existence or continuance, another cause besides itself, and so is not first. Moreover, His existence would then be due only to the non-existence of His contrary. The non-existence of His contrary would thus be the cause of His existence, and so He would not be the First Cause in the absolute sense.

So no being can be at the rank of His existence, since two contraries stand at one and the same rank of existence. The First is therefore alone in His existence; nothing else that exists shares the kind of His existence with Him at all, and so He is one. He is, moreover, alone in His rank as well, and so He is one in this respect too.

For one of the senses in which “one” is said is the indivisible. Anything indivisible in some respect is one in the respect in which it is indivisible: if it is indivisible in its action, it is one in that respect; if in its quality, it is one in respect of quality; and what is indivisible in its substance is one in its substance. The First, then, is indivisible in His substance.

Likewise, in order to be intellect in actuality and one who thinks in actuality, He does not need an essence that He would think and acquire from outside; rather, He is intellect and one who thinks by thinking His own essence. For the essence that thinks is the very essence that is thought, and so He is intellect insofar as He is thought. That He is intellect, that He is thought and that He thinks are all one essence and one indivisible substance. A human being, for example, is intelligible; but what is intelligible of him was not intelligible in actuality: it was intelligible in potentiality, and then became intelligible in actuality after the intellect had thought it. So what is intelligible of the human being is not what thinks, nor is the intellect in him ever what is thought; nor is our own intellect, insofar as it is intellect, something thought. We are ones who think, but not because our substance is intellect; for what we think is not that by which we have our substance.

The First is not like this. In Him, intellect, the one who thinks and what is thought are a single meaning, a single essence and a single indivisible substance.

Further, the name “living” is sometimes applied metaphorically to what is not an animal. It is then said of every being that has reached its final perfection, and of everything that has attained such existence and perfection that what it is by nature meant to produce issues from it, in the way it is meant to. In this sense too, since the existence of the First is the most perfect existence, He has a greater claim to the name “living” than what is so called by metaphor. The more complete a thing’s existence, the more complete what is thought and known of it, when it is known and thought, since what is thought of it in our souls corresponds to what exists of it. So what is thought of it in our souls corresponds to its existence outside our souls, in proportion to that existence; and if it is deficient in existence, what is thought of it in our souls is a more deficient intelligible.

There are two kinds of this. One kind, on its own side, resists being conceived and thought completely, because of the weakness of its existence and the deficiency of its essence and substance. The other kind is, on its own side, freely open to being understood and conceived completely and in the most perfect way; but our minds and the powers of our intellects, because of their weakness and their distance from the substance of that thing, are barred from conceiving it completely and as it is in its perfection of existence. Each of these two kinds stands, relative to the other, at the farthest extreme of existence: one at the utmost perfection, the other at the utmost deficiency.

Since we are entangled with matter, and matter is the reason our substances have become substances far removed from the First Substance, it follows that the closer our substances come to Him, the more complete, certain and true our conception of Him will be. That is, the closer we are to separating from matter, the more complete our conception of Him. We come closer to Him only by becoming intellect in actuality; and when we separate from matter completely, what is thought of Him in our minds becomes as perfect as it can be.

Beauty, splendor and adornment in every being consist in its existing with its best existence and attaining its final perfection. Since the existence of the First is the best existence, His beauty surpasses the beauty of everything that has beauty, and so too do His adornment and splendor. Moreover, all of these belong to Him in His substance and essence, that is, in Himself and through what He thinks of His essence. Our beauty, adornment and splendor, by contrast, belong to us through our accidents, not through our essence, and through things outside us, not in our substance. In Him, beauty and perfection are nothing but a single essence, and so it is with the rest.

Pleasure, joy and delight arise and are attained most fully when what is most beautiful, most splendid and most adorned is apprehended with the most exact and complete apprehension. Since He is, in the utmost degree, the most beautiful, the most splendid and the most adorned, His apprehension of His essence is the most exact apprehension possible, and His knowledge of His substance is the best knowledge without qualification. The pleasure the First takes is a pleasure whose essence we do not understand and whose magnitude we cannot know, except by comparison and relation to the pleasure we feel when we have apprehended what is, for us, most perfect and most splendid, with the most exact and complete apprehension, whether by sensation, by imagination or by intellectual knowledge. For in that state we attain a pleasure that we think surpasses every pleasure in greatness, and we count ourselves supremely fortunate in what we have attained, even though that state of ours lasts only a short while and quickly fades.

So His knowledge and apprehension of what is best, most beautiful and most splendid in His essence stand to our knowledge and apprehension of what is most beautiful and most splendid for us as His joy, pleasure and delight in Himself stand to the pleasure, joy and delight in ourselves that come to us. Now there is no proportion between our apprehension and His, nor between what we know and what He knows, nor between what is most beautiful for us and what is most beautiful in His essence; or if there is some proportion, it is a slight one. It follows that there is no proportion between our pleasure, joy and delight in ourselves and what the First has of these; or if there is, it is a very slight one. For how could there be a proportion between what is a small part and what is unlimited in time, between what is far less perfect and what is perfect in the utmost degree?

Now if whatever takes more pleasure in its essence, rejoices in it more and delights in it more greatly also loves its essence, is passionately in love with it and admires it more, then clearly the First loves His essence, is passionately in love with it and admires it in proportion; and that admiration stands to our passionate love for the excellence of our essence, in which we take pleasure, as the excellence and perfection of His essence stand to our own excellence and perfection, which we admire in ourselves. In Him, the one who loves is the very one loved, the one who admires is the one admired, and the lover is the beloved. This is unlike what we find in ourselves. For in us, what is passionately loved is excellence and beauty, but the lover in us is not beauty and excellence; the lover has another faculty, which does not belong to the beloved, so in us the lover is not the very same as the beloved. In Him, by contrast, the lover is the very beloved, and the one who loves is the one loved. So He is the first object of love and the first beloved, whether or not others love Him, whether or not others are passionately in love with Him.

What exists from Him exists by way of emanation: His existence overflows into the existence of something else, and the existence of another emanates from His own existence. In this way, the existence of what exists from Him is in no respect a cause of His existence. Nor is it an end for the existence of the First, as the existence of a son, insofar as he is a son, is an end for the existence of the parents insofar as they are parents—an end in the sense that the existence coming from Him would bring Him some perfection, as happens to us with most of the things that come from us. For example, by giving money to others we gain from them honor, pleasure or some other good, so that these produce some perfection in the giver.

So the First does not exist for the sake of something else. Nor do other things exist through Him in such a way that the purpose of His existence is that all other things should exist; for then His existence would have a cause outside Him, and He would not be first. Nor, again, does He gain, by giving existence to what is other than Him, a perfection He did not have before, beyond the perfection He already has—as someone gains who is generous with his wealth or with something else, and acquires through what he gives pleasure, honor, rule or some other good. All these things are impossible in the First, for they would do away with His firstness and His priority, and would make something else prior to Him and a cause of His existence. Rather, His existence is for the sake of His own essence, and it accompanies His substance and existence, and follows from them, that something else should exist from Him. Hence His existence, through which existence emanated to others, lies in His substance; and the existence through which He is constituted in His essence is the very same existence through which the existence of something else comes about from Him.

Nor is He divided into two things, by one of which His essence is constituted and by the other of which something else comes about from Him—as we have two things, by one of which we are constituted, namely rationality, and by the other of which we write, namely the art of writing. Rather, He is a single essence and a single substance, by which He is constituted and by which, the very same, something else comes about from Him.

Nor, again, does He need anything other than His essence in order that the existence of something else should emanate from His existence: no thing in Him, no accident in Him, no motion through which He would acquire a state He did not have, no instrument outside His essence. Fire, by contrast, needs heat, by which water turns to steam, in order that steam should come from it and from the water. The sun, in order to warm what is around us, needs to move, so that through motion it acquires a state it did not have; then, from it and through the state it acquired by motion, heat arises in what is around us. Or again, the carpenter needs the axe and the saw so that separating, cutting and splitting come about from him in the wood. Nor is His existence, through which the existence of others emanates from Him, more perfect than His existence by His substance, nor is His existence by His substance more perfect than that through which the existence of others emanates from Him; rather, the two together are a single essence.

Nor can there be any obstacle to the existence of something else emanating from Him, either from Himself or from outside, in any way at all.

Since beings are ordered from Him and each being obtains its share of existence according to its rank from Him, He is just, and His justice lies in His substance; it does not come from anything outside His substance.

When names of this kind are transferred and applied to the First, we intend them to signify the relation He has to others through the existence that has emanated from Him. So we should not make the relation part of His perfection, nor make the perfection signified by that name subsist through that relation. Rather, we should use the name to signify a substance and a perfection from which that relation necessarily follows; to signify that the relation subsists through that substance; and to signify that the relation follows from what has as its substance the substance the name signifies.

This fifth, too, exists not in matter: it thinks its essence and thinks the First. Through its essence, by which it is constituted, the existence of the sphere of Jupiter follows from it; and through what it thinks of the First, the existence of a sixth follows from it. This one, too, exists not in matter, and it thinks its essence and thinks the First. Through its essence, by which it is constituted, the existence of the sphere of Mars follows from it; and through what it thinks of the First, the existence of a seventh follows from it. This one, too, exists not in matter, and it thinks its essence and thinks the First. Through its essence, by which it is constituted, the existence of the sphere of the Sun follows from it; and through what it thinks of the First, the existence of an eighth follows from it. This one, too, exists not in matter, and it thinks its essence and thinks the First. Through its own proper essence, by which it is constituted, the existence of the sphere of Venus follows from it; and through what it thinks of the First, the existence of a ninth follows from it.

This one, too, exists not in matter: it thinks its essence and thinks the First. Through its essence, by which it is constituted, the existence of the sphere of Mercury follows from it; and through what it thinks of the First, the existence of a tenth follows from it. This one, too, exists not in matter, and it thinks its essence and thinks the First. Through its essence, by which it is constituted, the existence of the sphere of the Moon follows from it; and through what it thinks of the First, the existence of an eleventh follows from it. This eleventh, too, exists not in matter, and it thinks its essence and thinks the First. But with it ends the kind of existence whose possessors need no matter or substrate at all: these are the separate things, which in their substances are intellects and intelligibles. And with the sphere of the Moon ends the existence of the heavenly bodies, which by their nature move in a circle.

The natural bodies among these are the elements—fire, air, water and earth—and what is akin to them, such as vapor, flame and the like; the minerals, such as stones and their kinds; plants; non-rational animals; and rational animals.

The more deficient of a thing’s two existences is through its matter; the more perfect, through its form.

None of these is given its form from the beginning. Rather, each of these bodies is first given only its matter, through which its existence is merely in remote potentiality, not in actuality, since only its prime matter has been given to it. That is why it is always striving toward the form by which it is constituted, and it keeps rising step by step until it attains the form through which its existence is in actuality.

Each of the ten is unique in its existence and its rank; its existence cannot belong to anything else. For if something else shared its existence, then that other, if it is distinct from this one, must necessarily have something by which it differs from this one; and that by which it differs from this one would be its proper existence. So the existence proper to that other would not be the existence through which this one exists; hence their existence would not be a single existence, but each would have something proper to it. Nor can any of them have a contrary, for whatever has a contrary has a matter shared between it and its contrary, and none of these can have matter. Again, what falls under a species has many individuals only because there are many substrates for the form of that species; so what has no matter cannot have anything else besides itself in its species.

In proportion as the excellence of the First exceeds the excellence of its own essence, its delight in itself through thinking the First exceeds its delight in itself when it thinks its own essence. Likewise, its pleasure in its essence through thinking the First exceeds its pleasure through what it thinks of its own essence in proportion as the perfection of the First exceeds the perfection of its own essence; and its admiration and passionate love for its essence through what it thinks of the First exceed its admiration and love for it through what it thinks of its own essence in proportion as the splendor and beauty of the First exceed the splendor and beauty of its own essence. So what it loves first and admires first in itself is through what it thinks of the First, and only secondly through what it thinks of its own essence. Thus the First, in relation to these ten as well, is the first object of love and the first beloved.

Since it does not think by its substrate but only by its form, there is in it something that is thought but does not think. It thinks all that by which it is constituted and given form—that is, it is constituted by a form and a substrate—and in this it differs from the First and from the ten, which are free of matter and of every substrate. The human being shares matter with it. It too delights in its essence, not only through what it thinks of its essence but through what it thinks of the First, and then through what it thinks of the essence of the separate being from which its existence derives. It shares with the separate being in its passionate love for the First, and in its admiration for itself through the splendor and beauty it has received from the First; but in all this it falls far short of the ten.

Of everything they share with material beings, the heavenly bodies have the noblest and best. They have the best of shapes, the spherical; and of the visible qualities, the best, which is light. For some of their parts produce light—these are the stars—and some of their parts are transparent in actuality, since they are filled with light, both from themselves and from what they receive from the stars. They have the best of motions, circular motion. And they share with the ten in having been given, from the very beginning, the best of that by which they are constituted; and so too with their magnitudes, their shapes and the visible qualities proper to them.

Whenever a part of this body comes to be in some part of the “around,” it needs to have the part in front of it as well, yet it cannot have both parts together at one time. So it has to leave the part it is in and pass to the one ahead, until it has occupied every part of the “around” in turn. And since it has no better claim to the part it was in at one time than at another, that part must be its always. But that part cannot be its always as one in number, so it becomes one in species. It has the part for a while and then does not. Then it returns to one like it in species, leaves that too for a period, then returns to a third like it, leaves that too for a period, then returns to a fourth like it, and so forever.

It is clear, then, that what it moves away from, passes through and returns to lies in its relations to the body around which the heaven exists. “Relation” means that we say “this is to that,” “this is from that,” and the like. For “where” means the relation of a body to the surface of the body that fits around it. Every heavenly body is in a sphere, that is, a solid circle. The relations of its parts to the parts of the surface of the bodies beneath it are always changing, and each part returns at some future time to relations like those that went before. Now the relation of one thing to another is the lowest thing that belongs to it, the accident furthest removed from its substance. Each of the spheres and solid circles has a motion of its own, either faster or slower than the motion of the others. Take the sphere of Saturn and the sphere of the Moon: the sphere of the Moon moves faster than the sphere of Saturn.

Again, at times they draw near to some of what lies beneath them and at times move away from it, and at times they appear and at times are hidden. So these contraries attach to them not in their substances, nor in the accidents close to their substances, but in their relations. Rising and setting are examples: they are two contrary relations of these bodies to what lies beneath them. The heavenly body is the first of the beings to which contrary things attach, and the first things in which there is contrariety are the relations of this body to what lies beneath it and of these bodies to one another. These contraries are the lowest of contraries, and contrariety is a deficiency in existence. So the heavenly body is touched by deficiency only in the lowest of the things that can exist.

First the elements mix with one another, and from this many contrary bodies arise. Then these contraries mix, some only with one another, others with one another and with the elements. This is a second mixture after the first, and from it, too, many bodies with contrary forms arise. In each of these, too, three sorts of power arise: powers by which they act on one another, powers by which each receives another’s action on it, and powers by which each moves of itself without an external mover. Then the heavenly bodies act on them, they act on one another, the elements act on them, and they in turn act on the elements. From the combination of these actions in different directions arise many further mixtures, which carry them far from the elements and from prime matter. They go on mixing, each mixture following an earlier one, so that each later mixture is always more compound than the one before. This continues until bodies arise that cannot mix in such a way that their mixture produces another body further removed from the elements than they are. There the mixing stops.

In each of these species arise powers by which it moves of itself, powers by which it acts on another, and powers by which it receives another’s action on it. Whatever acts on another has, in general, three kinds of object for its action: those on which it acts for the most part, those on which it acts seldom, and those on which it acts as often as not. Likewise, what receives another’s action may be the object of three kinds of agent: those that act on it for the most part, those that act on it seldom, and those that act on it as often as not. And the action of each on each is either to support it or to oppose it.

Then the heavenly bodies, alongside the action of these bodies on one another, act on each of them, supporting some and opposing others. What they support, they support at one time and oppose at another, and what they oppose, they oppose at one time and support again at another. So the various kinds of heavenly action on them combine with their actions on one another. From this combination arise a great many further blendings and mixtures, and so in each species there arise many individuals that differ widely. These, then, are the causes of the existence of the natural things beneath the heavenly bodies.

Its form entitles it to remain in the existence it has; its matter entitles it to exist with another existence, contrary to the one it has. Since both cannot be granted at one and the same time, it necessarily follows that one is granted at one time. The thing exists and remains for a while with its existence preserved; then it perishes and its contrary comes to exist; then that one remains; and so on forever. For the existence of neither has a better claim than the existence of the other, nor the survival of either than the survival of the other, since each has its share of existence and survival.

Again, one and the same matter is shared by two contraries, and each of the two is constituted by it. The matter has no better claim to one of them than to the other, and it cannot be given to both at once. So it necessarily follows that the matter is given at times to this contrary and at times to that, alternating between them. Each of them, then, is as if it had a right lodged with the other: each holds something that belongs to the other, and the other holds something that belongs to it. With each of them there is a right that ought to pass from each to each. Justice here is that whatever is found of this one’s matter be given to that one, or whatever is found of that one’s matter be given to this one, alternating between them.

Because justice must be done among these beings, no single thing could remain forever as one in number. So it was made to survive through all time as one in species. For a thing to remain one in species, the individuals of that species must exist for a while, then perish and be replaced by other individuals of the same species, and so forever after this pattern. Some of these things are elements and some come to be from their mixture. Of those that come from their mixture, some come from a more compound mixture and some from a less compound one. As for the elements, the contrary that destroys each of them comes only from outside, since there is no contrary within the whole of its body.

As for what comes to be from a mixture of little compoundness, the contraries in it are few, and their powers are broken and weak. So the destroying contrary within it is weak in power and cannot destroy it except with help from outside, and its destroying contrary, too, comes from outside. What comes to be from a less compound mixture has its destroying contraries from outside only. As for what comes from a more compound mixture, the contraries in it and their combinations are many, so the contrariety within these mixed things is more evident. The powers of the contraries in them are strong, and they also act on one another together. Since such things are made of dissimilar parts, nothing prevents there being contrariety within them. So the contrary that destroys such a thing comes both from outside its body and from inside it.

Bodies that are destroyed by a contrary from outside do not dissolve of themselves continually. Stones and sand are examples: these and things akin to them dissolve only through external things. The others, plants and animals, dissolve also through things within them that are contrary to them. So if any of these lasts long, it keeps its form for a while by continually replacing what dissolves from its body: something takes the place of what dissolves. But nothing can replace what dissolves from a body and join itself to that body unless that incoming body is stripped of the form it had and clothed in the form of this very body. That is what nourishment is.

So a nutritive faculty was placed in these bodies, together with everything that assists this faculty. Each of these bodies thus draws to itself something contrary to it, strips it of that contrariety, receives it into itself and clothes it in the form it is itself wrapped in. This continues until, over a long span of time, this faculty is spent, and more dissolves from the body than the restoring faculty can replace, so that the body perishes. In this way the body is protected against what dissolves it from within. Against what destroys it from outside, it is protected by the instruments given to it, some within it and some outside its body.

So for what endures as one in species to endure, other individuals must take the place of those of it that perish. This happens in one of two ways. Either individuals are brought into existence from the first individuals while these still exist, so that when the first perish these take their place; in this way the species is at no time without some existing individual, whether in that place or in another. Or what replaces the first individual arises some time after it has perished, so that for some time there is no individual of that species at all.

So in some of them powers were placed by which a thing like them in species comes to be, and in others they were not. Where such powers were not placed, the causes for what perishes of them lie in the heavenly bodies alone, which generate it, or in the heavenly bodies together with the elements, which assist them in this. Where a power was placed by which a thing like it in species comes to be, this happens through the power it has. Joined to this is the action of the heavenly bodies and of all the other bodies. Either they help, or they oppose it, though not with an opposition that cancels the power’s action. Rather, they produce a blend that either brings the action of that power into balance or moves it away from balance, a little or a lot, but not so far as to cancel its action. At that point there arises what takes the place of what has perished of that species. All these things happen either for the most part, or seldom, or as often as not. In this way this genus of beings survives and endures.

Again, since these beings are contraries, every two contraries among them share a matter. The matter of this body is also the very matter of that one, and the matter of that one is also the very matter of this one. So each holds something that belongs to the other, and the other holds something that belongs to it. In this respect each has, as it were, a right with each, which ought to pass from each to each. The matter of a thing that is held by another is of one of two kinds. It may be matter destined to take on that thing’s own very form, as with a body that is nourished by another body. Or it may be matter destined to take on the form of its species but not its own very form, as with people who succeed people who have passed away.

Justice in this is that whatever this one holds of that one’s matter be found and given to that one, and whatever that one holds of this one’s matter be given by that one to this one. A thing recovers its matter from its contrary and takes it back in one of several ways. It may do so by a power in it, joined to its form in a single body, so that this body is an inseparable instrument for it in this. The power may be in another body, which is then a separate instrument that serves it only in taking matter back from its contrary, while another power, in that body or in another, clothes the matter either in the thing’s own very form or in the form of its species. A single power may do both. What secures its right for it may be another body that rules over it, heavenly or not. Or it may be all of these together.

A body becomes matter for another body in one of two ways: either the other body grants it its own form completely, or it clothes it in something of its form and diminishes its strength. A body that is an instrument serving another body is also an instrument in one of these two ways. Either it serves through its form, complete; or the other clothes it with only a little of the strength of its form, in a measure that does not take it out of its essence. It is as when one lends a slave something of the strength of one’s own arm, yet holds slaves down until they are humbled and serve.

After that the rational faculty arises in him. By it he is able to think the intelligibles, to tell the fine from the foul, and to acquire the arts and sciences; and an appetite toward what he thinks is joined to it too. The nutritive faculty includes one ruling faculty and other faculties that are its auxiliaries and servants. Among the organs of the body, the ruling nutritive faculty is in the heart, while its auxiliaries and servants are spread through the other organs. Each of the servant and auxiliary faculties resides in one of the other organs of the body. The ruling faculty by nature governs the other faculties, and the other faculties imitate it and model their actions on it, aiming at what is by nature the goal of their ruler, which is in the heart. Such are the stomach, the liver and the spleen, the organs that serve these, the organs that serve these servants, and those that serve these in turn.

For the liver is an organ that both rules and is ruled: it is ruled by the heart and rules the gall bladder, the kidney and similar organs. The bladder serves the kidney, the kidney serves the liver, and the liver serves the heart, and the rest of the organs are arranged in the same way. The sensitive faculty has a ruler and auxiliaries. Its auxiliaries are the five senses known to everyone, spread through the eyes, the ears and the rest, each of the five perceiving the sensible proper to it. The ruling one is that in which everything the five perceive is gathered together. The five are like its heralds, as though they were intelligence agents, each charged with one kind of report and with the reports from one region of the kingdom. The ruling faculty is like the king, with whom the reports from all the regions of his kingdom are gathered by his agents. The ruling one of these, too, is in the heart.

The appetitive faculty, which desires a thing or dislikes it, is a ruler and has servants. It is the faculty through which will comes about. For will is an appetite toward, or away from, something perceived by sense, by imagination or by the rational faculty and judged to be something to be taken or left. Appetite may be toward knowing something, or toward doing something, either with the whole body or with some organ of it.

Appetite comes about through the ruling appetitive faculty, while actions done with the body come about through faculties that serve the appetitive faculty. These faculties are spread through organs prepared for those actions to be done by them. Some are nerves and some are muscles, running through the organs by which animals and human beings perform the actions they have an appetite for: the hands, the feet and the other organs that can be moved at will. So the faculties in organs like these are all bodily instruments, servants of the ruling appetitive faculties in the heart.

When one longs to imagine something, this is attained in several ways. The first is an act of the imaginative faculty itself: imagining something hoped for and expected, or imagining something past, or wishing for something that the imaginative faculty composes. The second is what reaches the imaginative faculty from the sensing of something, so that something in it presents itself as fearful or as hoped for, or what reaches it from the activity of the rational faculty. These, then, are the faculties of the soul.

The heart is the ruling organ, the one that no other organ of the body rules. Next to it comes the brain, for it too is a ruling organ of a kind. Its rulership, however, is not primary but secondary, because it is ruled by the heart and rules the other organs. It serves the heart directly, and the other organs serve the brain according to what the heart by nature intends. It is like the steward of a man’s household: he serves the man himself, and the rest of the household serve the steward according to what the man intends in both respects. He is, as it were, the man’s deputy: he stands in his place, acts on his behalf, and takes his place in whatever the master cannot do in person. So the brain has charge of serving the heart in the noblest of its functions.

For example, the heart is the source of the innate heat. From it the heat spreads into the other organs, and from it they draw their supply. This happens through the innate animal spirit that spreads from the heart into them through the pulsating vessels, and it is by the heat that the heart supplies to them that the innate heat of the organs is preserved. The brain is what tempers the heat that by its nature passes to it from the heart, so that the heat reaching each organ is moderate and suited to it. This is the first of the brain’s functions, the first service it renders, and the one that extends most widely to the organs. Again, the nerves are of two kinds. One kind are instruments for the auxiliaries of the ruling sensitive faculty in the heart, by which each of them senses the sensation proper to it. The other are instruments of the organs that serve the appetitive faculty in the heart: through them these organs are able to move with voluntary motion.note

The brain serves the heart by supplying the nerves of sensation with what keeps their powers preserved, the powers by which the auxiliaries are able to sense. The brain also serves the heart by supplying the nerves of voluntary motion with what keeps their powers preserved, the powers by which the instrumental organs are able to perform the voluntary motion through which they serve the appetitive faculty in the heart. For many of these nerves have their roots, from which they draw what preserves their powers, in the brain itself, and many have their roots in the spinal cord that runs down from it. The spinal cord is joined at its top to the brain, so the brain supplies these nerves, with the spinal cord sharing in the supply.

Again, the imaginative faculty imagines only when the heat of the heart is at a definite level. Likewise, the rational faculty thinks only when the heart’s heat is in a certain measure, that is, the measure proper to that act, and the same holds for its retaining and recalling a thing. So the brain also serves the heart by bringing its heat to the balance at which its imagining is good, the balance at which its thinking and deliberation are good, and the balance at which its retention and recall are good. With one part of itself it tempers the heat so that imagining is sound; with another part, so that thinking is sound; and with a third, so that it suits retention and memory. The reason is this. Since the heart is the source of the innate heat, its heat could only be made strong and excessive, so that there would be a surplus to flow out to the other organs, and so that it would not fall short or fail. It is thus in itself only for the sake of an end.

Since this is so, the heat that passes from it to the organs had to be tempered, for its heat in itself is not at the balance at which its own proper acts are performed well. For this reason the brain was made by nature cold and moist, even to the touch, compared with the other organs, and a faculty of the soul was placed in it by which the heat of the heart is brought to a definite, determinate balance. As for the nerves of sensation and of motion, since they are earthy by nature and quick to dry out, they needed to be kept moist, supple enough to stretch and contract. The nerves of sensation needed, besides this, the innate spirit with no smokiness in it at all, and such is the condition of the innate spirit that runs through the parts of the brain.

Since the heart is excessively hot and fiery, the roots of the nerves, from which they draw what preserves their powers, were not placed in the heart, lest they dry out quickly, dissolve, and lose their powers and functions. Their roots were placed in the brain and the spinal cord, because these two are very moist, so that moisture might pass from each of them into the nerves, keeping them supple and preserving their powers of soul. Some nerves need the moisture passing into them to be watery and fine, with no viscosity at all; others need some viscosity. Those that need a fine wateriness without viscosity had their roots placed in the brain. Those that need, besides this, their moisture to be viscous had their roots placed in the spinal cord. And those that need their moisture to be slight had their roots placed at the bottom of the vertebrae and in the coccyx.

The first of the organs to be formed is the heart, then the brain, then the liver, then the spleen, and the other organs follow them. The organs of generation are the latest of all to function, and their rulership in the body is slight. This is evident from the action of the testicles and from their preserving the male heat and the male spirit that pass to them from the heart, in male animals that have testicles.

When the semen reaches the female’s womb and meets there blood that the womb has prepared to receive the human form, the semen gives that blood a power by which it moves until there come about from that blood the human organs and the form of each organ, in short, the human form. So the blood prepared in the womb is the matter of the human being, and the semen is what moves that matter until the form comes about in it. The semen stands to the blood prepared in the womb as rennet stands to the milk it curdles. Just as rennet brings about the curdling in the milk but is neither a part nor the matter of what curdles, so the semen is neither a part nor the matter of what curdles in the womb. The embryo comes from the semen as curds come from rennet, and from the blood of the womb as curds come from fresh milk, or a jug from copper.

What produces semen in a human being are the vessels in which it is found, namely the veins beneath the skin of the pubic region, with some help from the testicles. These veins open into the channel in the penis, so that the semen flows from them into that channel and runs along it until it pours into the womb. There it gives the blood a principle of power by which the blood is changed until the organs, the form of each organ and the form of the whole body come about.

Semen is the male’s instrument. Some instruments are connected and some are separate. Take the physician as an example. The hand is an instrument with which he treats, the scalpel is an instrument with which he treats, and the medicine is an instrument with which he treats. The medicine is a separate instrument: the physician is in contact with it only while he prepares and makes it and gives it a power by which it moves the patient’s body toward health. Once that power is in it, he puts it, say, inside the patient’s body, and it moves the body toward health while the physician who administered it is absent, or even dead.

So it is with semen. The scalpel performs its act only in contact with the physician who uses it, and the hand is more closely connected with him than the scalpel. The medicine, by contrast, acts by the power in it without the physician being in contact with it. Likewise semen is an instrument of the male generative faculty and acts while separate, whereas the seminal vessels and the testicles are instruments of generation connected to the body. So the veins that serve as the instruments of semen stand to the ruling faculty in the heart as the physician’s hand stands to him: with it he works the medicine, gives it a moving power, and through it moves the patient’s body to health. For these veins, which the heart uses by nature, are instruments for giving the semen the power by which it moves the blood prepared in the womb toward the form of that species of animal.

Once the blood has received from the semen the power by which it moves toward the form, the first thing formed is the heart, and the formation of the other organs waits upon whatever faculties happen to arise in the heart. If, along with the nutritive faculty, the faculty that prepares matter arises in it, the other organs are formed as female organs; if the faculty that gives form arises in it, they are formed as male organs. From the former come the generative organs of the female, and from the latter the generative organs of the male. The remaining faculties of the soul then arise in the female just as they do in the male.

In human beings these two faculties, the male and the female, are divided between two individuals. In many plants, however, they are joined completely in a single individual, as in many plants that grow from seed. The plant provides the matter, which is the seed, and with it provides at the same time a power by which the seed moves toward the form. For in the seed there is a readiness to receive the form and a power by which it moves toward the form. What gave it the readiness to receive the form is the female faculty; what gave it a principle by which it moves toward the form is the male faculty.

Some animals are like this too. There are also animals in which the female faculty is complete, joined with a deficient male faculty that does its work up to a certain point and then ceases, so that it needs a helper from outside. Such are the animals that lay wind-eggs, and many kinds of fish that lay their eggs and then leave them. Their males follow and shed a fluid over them: any egg touched by some of that fluid produces an animal, and any it does not reach goes bad.note

In the sensitive, imaginative and rational faculties, however, they do not differ. External things produce impressions of sensibles in the sensitive faculties that serve as auxiliaries. The sensibles of different kinds, apprehended by the five kinds of senses, are then gathered in the ruling sensitive faculty. The sensibles present in this faculty produce impressions of images in the imaginative faculty, and there they remain preserved after the senses are no longer in contact with them. The imaginative faculty has control over them: at times it separates some from others, and at times it combines them with one another in many kinds of combinations, without limit, some false and some true.

The other things that are in matter, or are matter, or possess matter, are not intellects, either in actuality or in potentiality. They are, however, intelligibles in potentiality and can become intelligibles in actuality. Yet their substances do not suffice for them to become intelligibles in actuality of their own accord. Nor do the rational faculty and what it has been given by nature suffice for it to become intellect in actuality of its own accord. To become intellect in actuality it needs something else that brings it from potentiality to actuality, and it becomes intellect in actuality only when the intelligibles come to be in it. The potential intelligibles, in turn, become actual intelligibles when they come to be thought by the intellect in actuality, and they too need something else to bring them out of potentiality and make them actual.

The agent that brings it from potentiality to actuality is an essence whose substance is a certain intellect in actuality, separate from matter. That intellect gives the material intellect, which is intellect in potentiality, something comparable to the light that the sun gives to sight, for it stands to the material intellect as the sun stands to sight. Sight is a faculty and a disposition in matter. Before it sees, it is sight in potentiality, and before colors are seen, they are visible and seen in potentiality. The substance of the visual faculty in the eye does not suffice for it to become sight in actuality, nor do the substances of colors suffice for them to become visible and seen in actuality.

So the sun gives sight a light by which it is illuminated, and gives colors a light by which they are illuminated. Through the light it has acquired from the sun, sight comes to see in actuality and to be sight in actuality; and through that light colors become seen and visible in actuality, after having been seen and visible in potentiality. In the same way, this intellect in actuality provides the material intellect with something that it inscribes in it, and that thing stands to the material intellect as light stands to sight.

By that very light, sight sees the light that is the cause of its seeing; by the same light it sees the sun that is the cause of the light; and it sees the things that are visible in potentiality, so that they become visible in actuality. In the same way, by that thing which stands to it as light stands to sight, the material intellect thinks that thing itself. By it, the material intellect thinks the intellect in actuality that is the cause of that thing’s being inscribed in the material intellect. Through it, the things that were intelligible in potentiality become intelligible in actuality, and the material intellect too becomes intellect in actuality after having been intellect in potentiality. The action of this separate intellect on the material intellect resembles the action of the sun on sight; that is why it is called the Active Intellect. Among the separate things mentioned earlier, below the First Cause, it holds the tenth rank. The material intellect is called the passive intellect.

When that thing which stands to the rational faculty as light stands to sight has come to be in it from the Active Intellect, then the sensibles preserved in the imaginative faculty give rise to intelligibles in the rational faculty. These are the first intelligibles, which are common to all people: for example, that the whole is greater than the part, and that magnitudes equal to one and the same thing are equal to one another.

The voluntary actions that help in reaching happiness are the fine actions, and the dispositions and habits from which these actions issue are the virtues. These are goods not for their own sake but only for the sake of happiness. The actions that hinder happiness are the evils, that is, the base actions, and the dispositions and habits from which these actions come are the deficiencies, the vices and the vile traits. The nutritive faculty in a human being was made only to serve the body. The sensitive and imaginative faculties were made to serve the body and to serve the rational faculty, and the service these three give the body comes back to serving the rational faculty, since the rational faculty subsists in the first place through the body. The rational faculty is partly practical and partly theoretical. The practical was made to serve the theoretical, while the theoretical was made to serve nothing else, but so that happiness might be reached through it. All of these are coupled with the appetitive faculty, and the appetitive faculty serves the sensitive, the imaginative and the rational faculties.

The serving and apprehending faculties cannot fully perform their service and work except through the appetitive faculty. Sensation, imagination and deliberation are not enough for action unless they are joined by a longing for what has been sensed, imagined, or deliberated on and known; for will is to strive, by the appetitive faculty, toward what one has apprehended. So when one knows happiness by the theoretical faculty and sets it up as a goal, longs for it through the appetitive faculty, discovers by the deliberative faculty what should be done to attain it, with the help of the imaginative faculty and the senses, and then performs those actions with the instruments of the appetitive faculty, all of that person’s actions are good and fine. But when one does not know happiness, or knows it but does not set it up as a goal to be longed for, and instead sets up something else as the goal, longs for that through the appetitive faculty, discovers by the deliberative faculty what should be done to attain it, with the help of the senses and the imaginative faculty, and then performs those actions with the instruments of the appetitive faculty, none of that person’s actions are fine.

Besides preserving the impressions of sensibles and combining them with one another, it has a third activity: imitation. Of all the faculties of the soul, it alone has the power to imitate the sensible things that remain preserved in it. Sometimes it imitates the sensibles of the five senses by combining the sensibles preserved in it that imitate them. Sometimes it imitates the intelligibles, sometimes the nutritive faculty, sometimes the appetitive faculty. It also imitates the temperament in which it finds the body. When it finds the body’s temperament moist, it imitates the moisture by combining sensibles that imitate moisture, such as waters and swimming in them. When the body’s temperament is dry, it imitates the body’s dryness with the sensibles suited to imitate dryness. In the same way it imitates the body’s heat and coldness, whenever its temperament happens at some time to be hot or cold.

Since this faculty is a disposition and a form in the body, it might be possible that the body, when it is in a certain temperament, produces that temperament in it. But since the faculty belongs to the soul, it receives the temperament that the body produces in it according to what its own nature can receive, not according to the way bodies by nature receive temperaments. For when a moist body produces moisture in another body, the body acted upon receives the moisture and becomes moist like the first.

If its substance is not such that it can receive the thing as it is, it receives it by imitating it through whatever sensibles it finds within itself that are of a nature to imitate that thing. For it cannot receive intelligibles as intelligibles. When the rational faculty gives it the intelligibles it has acquired, the imaginative faculty does not receive them as they are in the rational faculty but imitates them through the sensibles that imitate them. When the body gives it the temperament it happens to have at a given time, it receives that temperament through whatever sensibles it happens to have that are of a nature to imitate that temperament. And when it is given something of a kind to be sensed, it sometimes receives it as it was given, and sometimes imitates that sensible thing through other sensibles that imitate it.

When it finds the appetitive faculty closely prepared for some quality, such as anger or desire, or for certain actions in general, it imitates the appetitive faculty. It does so by composing the actions that would naturally proceed from the disposition present in the appetitive faculty, which at that moment is prepared to receive them. In such a case the subordinate faculties sometimes rouse the serving organs actually to perform the actions that those organs would perform if those actions were in the appetitive faculty. By this activity the imaginative faculty sometimes resembles someone who is joking, and sometimes someone acting with premeditation.

Nor is that all. When the body’s temperament is of a kind that some affection of the appetitive faculty naturally follows, the imaginative faculty imitates that temperament through the actions of the appetitive faculty that arise from that affection. It does so before the affection itself has occurred, and the organs in which the faculty serving the appetitive faculty resides are actually roused toward those actions. For example, when the temperament of the body becomes one that sexual desire in the appetitive faculty naturally follows, the imaginative faculty imitates that temperament through sexual acts. The organs of this act are then roused in readiness for intercourse. This happens not from any desire present at that moment but because the imaginative faculty imitates the desire through the acts belonging to that desire. The same holds for the other affections.

In the same way a man sometimes gets up from his sleep and strikes someone, or gets up and flees, though nothing has reached him from outside. What the imaginative faculty imitates of that thing takes the place the thing would occupy if it had actually happened. The imaginative faculty also imitates the rational faculty, by imitating the intelligibles that have come to be in it through the things of a nature to imitate intelligibles. It imitates the intelligibles of utmost perfection, such as the First Cause, the things separate from matter and the heavens, by the best and most perfect sensibles, such as things beautiful to look at. It imitates the deficient intelligibles by the meanest and most deficient sensibles, such as things ugly to look at. In the same way it imitates them by the other sensibles that are pleasing to the eye.

These particulars are what the practical rational faculty naturally works out by deliberation. Some are present and some will come about in the future. But whatever the imaginative faculty receives of all these comes to it without the mediation of deliberation. So in these matters it obtains what is otherwise obtained only after being worked out by deliberation. From the particulars that the Active Intellect gives the imaginative faculty come dreams and true visions. From the intelligibles it gives it, which the faculty receives by letting their imitations stand in their place, come divinations about divine things. All of these may occur in sleep or in waking. Those that occur in waking are rare and found in very few people. Of those that occur in sleep, most are particulars, and intelligibles are few.

When the sensibles through which the imaginative faculty imitated those things happen to be of utmost beauty and perfection, the one who sees them says that God has a grandeur that is majestic and wondrous. He sees wondrous things, none of which could exist anywhere among other beings. Nor is it impossible that a man whose imaginative faculty has reached utmost perfection should receive from the Active Intellect, while awake, present and future particulars or their sensible imitations. He may also receive imitations of the separate intelligibles and the other noble beings, and see them. Through the intelligibles he receives, he then has prophecy concerning divine things. This is the most perfect rank the imaginative faculty can reach, and the most perfect rank a human being can attain through his imaginative faculty.

Below this is the one who sees all these, some while awake and some in his sleep, and the one who imagines all these things within himself but does not see them with his eyes. Below this is the one who sees all these in his sleep only. The statements in which such people express themselves are imitative statements: symbols and riddles, substitutions and similes.

These people differ greatly from one another. Some receive particulars and see them in waking only, but do not receive intelligibles. Some receive intelligibles and see them in waking, but do not receive particulars. Some receive and see some of these and not others. Some see something while awake but do not receive some of these in their sleep. Some receive nothing while awake and receive whatever they receive in their sleep only: in sleep they receive particulars but not intelligibles. Some receive something of the one kind and something of the other. Some receive something of the particulars only, and most people are found to be like this. People also surpass one another in this. All of these assist the rational faculty.

Sometimes things befall a person that change his temperament, and this prepares him to receive some of these from the Active Intellect, at times while awake and at times in sleep. In some people this lasts for a period, in others until a certain time, after which it disappears. Things may also befall a person that corrupt his temperament and corrupt his imaginings. He then sees things composed by the imaginative faculty in these ways that have no existence and are not imitations of anything existent. Such are the melancholics, the mad and people like them.

The city in which association aims at cooperation in the things by which happiness is truly attained is the virtuous city. The association through which people cooperate to attain happiness is the virtuous association. The nation all of whose cities cooperate in what leads to happiness is the virtuous nation. Likewise, the inhabited world is virtuous only when the nations in it cooperate to attain happiness.

There is a difference, however. The organs of the body are natural, and their dispositions are natural faculties. The parts of the city, though natural, perform their actions for the city through dispositions and habits that are not natural but voluntary. It is true that the parts of the city are endowed by nature with unequal natural constitutions, which fit one person for one thing and another for another. But they are not parts of the city by their natural constitutions alone. They are parts of it by the voluntary habits they acquire, which are the arts and the like. The faculties that are by nature the organs of the body have their counterparts in the parts of the city in voluntary habits and dispositions.

The heart comes into being first. It is then the cause of the existence of the body’s other organs, the cause of their acquiring their faculties, and the cause of their being ordered in their ranks. When one of them falls into disorder, it is the heart that supplies what removes the disorder. In the same way the ruler of this city must come first. He is then the cause of the city and its parts coming into being, the cause of its parts acquiring their voluntary habits, and the cause of their being ordered in their ranks. If one of its parts falls into disorder, it is he who supplies it with what removes its disorder.

The organs close to the ruling organ perform the nobler of the natural actions that serve the aim of the one that rules first by nature. The organs below them perform actions of lesser nobility, until one reaches the organs that perform the meanest actions. In the same way, the parts closest in rank to the ruler of the city perform the nobler of the voluntary actions, those below them perform actions of lesser nobility, until one reaches the parts that perform the meanest actions. The meanness of an action sometimes comes from the meanness of its substrate, even when the action is of great use, like the action of the bladder and of the lower intestines in the body. Sometimes it comes from the action being of little use, and sometimes from its being very easy. So it is in the city too.

So too every whole whose parts are by nature harmonious, ordered and linked together has a ruler that stands in this same relation to its other parts.

In this order all beings follow the aim of the First Cause. Those that were given everything by which they exist from the very beginning were made from the start to follow the example and purpose of the First, and so they came to be in the high ranks. Those that were not given everything by which they exist from the beginning were given a power by which they move toward what they are expected to attain, and in this they follow the aim of the First. The virtuous city should be the same. All its parts should, in their actions, follow in due order the example of their first ruler’s purpose.

The first ruler in a genus is one whom nothing of that genus can rule. The ruler of the organs, for example, is the one over which no other organ can rule, and the same is true of every ruler in general. In the same way the first ruler of the virtuous city must have an art by which one cannot serve at all, and which no other art can rule at all. His art must be the one toward whose aim all the other arts tend, and at which all the actions of the virtuous city are directed.

That person must be one whom no other person rules at all. He must be a person who has been perfected and has become intellect and intelligible in actuality. His imaginative faculty must have been perfected by nature to the utmost degree, in the way we have described, so that this faculty in him is prepared by nature to receive from the Active Intellect, either in waking or in sleep, particulars, either as they are or through what imitates them, and then intelligibles through what imitates them. And his passive intellect must have been perfected with all the intelligibles, so that none of them is hidden from him, and must have become intellect in actuality.

Consider any person whose passive intellect has been perfected with all the intelligibles and has become intellect in actuality and intelligible in actuality, so that what is thought in him has become the very thing that thinks. There then comes to be in him a certain intellect in actuality whose rank is above the passive intellect. It is more complete, more separate from matter and closer to the Active Intellect. It is called the acquired intellect. It becomes intermediate between the passive intellect and the Active Intellect, with nothing else between it and the Active Intellect. So the passive intellect is like matter and substrate for the acquired intellect, and the acquired intellect is like matter and substrate for the Active Intellect. The rational faculty, which is a natural disposition, is matter serving as substrate for the passive intellect that is intellect in actuality. The first rank by which a human being is human is the presence of the natural disposition that is receptive and prepared to become intellect in actuality. This is common to all. Between it and the Active Intellect there are two ranks: the coming to be of the passive intellect in actuality, and the coming to be of the acquired intellect.

When this has happened in both parts of his rational faculty, the theoretical and the practical, and then in his imaginative faculty, this person is the one who receives revelation. God, mighty and majestic is He, reveals to him through the mediation of the Active Intellect. What emanates from God, blessed and exalted is He, to the Active Intellect, the Active Intellect causes to emanate to his passive intellect through the mediation of the acquired intellect, and then to his imaginative faculty. Through what emanates from it to his passive intellect he is a sage and philosopher, and wholly prudent. Through what emanates from it to his imaginative faculty he is a prophet who warns of what will be and tells of particulars that are now, through a mode of being in which he thinks the divine. This person is at the most perfect rank of humanity and at the highest degree of happiness. His soul is perfect and united with the Active Intellect in the way we have described. This person is the one who knows every action by which happiness can be attained.

This is the first condition of the ruler. He must also have the ability, with his tongue, to convey everything he knows in words that create vivid images, and the ability to guide people well to happiness and to the actions by which happiness is attained. And he must also have physical endurance for carrying out particular tasks.

Next, he must be perceptive and quick-witted, so that when he sees the slightest indication of something, he grasps it in the direction the indication points. Next, he must express himself well, his tongue serving him to state fully everything he has in mind. Next, he must love learning and acquiring knowledge, devote himself to it and take it in readily, without being pained by the toil of study or troubled by the effort it costs him. Next, he must not be greedy for food, drink and sex. He must by nature avoid amusement and hate the pleasures that come from these things. Next, he must love truth and those who are truthful, and hate falsehood and those who lie. Next, he must be great of soul and love honor, his soul by nature rising above everything disgraceful and aspiring by nature to what is loftiest. Next, the dirham, the dinar and the other goods of this world must be of little account to him.

Next, he must by nature love justice and the just, and hate injustice and oppression and those who practice them. He must deal fairly, whether with his own people or with others, and urge others to do the same. He must come to the aid of whoever has suffered injustice, and readily lend himself to whatever he sees to be good and fine. Next, he must be just and easy to lead, neither obstinate nor stubborn when called to justice, but hard to lead when called to injustice and to what is base. Next, he must be firm in his resolve to do what he thinks ought to be done, bold and daring in doing it, without fear or weakness of soul.

If it happens that no such person is to be found at some time, then the laws and practices laid down by this ruler, and by others like him if a succession of them has ruled in the city, are taken up and established. The second ruler, who succeeds the first, will be someone in whom those conditions were combined from birth and childhood, and in whom six conditions are present once he has grown up. The first is that he be a sage. The second is that he be learned, preserving the laws, practices and ways of life that the first rulers instituted for the city, and following them completely in all his actions. The third is that he excel at deriving rulings where no law has been handed down from his predecessors, and that in what he derives he follow the example of the first imams. The fourth is that he have excellent deliberation and the power to derive what must be known at any present time about matters and events that arise of a kind the first rulers were in no position to deal with, and that in what he derives he aim at the welfare of the city. The fifth is that he excel at guiding people by speech to the laws of the first rulers and to those derived after them on their model. The sixth is that he have bodily firmness in conducting the business of war, that is, that he possess both the subordinate and the ruling arts of war.

The ignorant city divides into a number of cities. One is the city of necessity, whose people aim to confine themselves to the necessities that sustain the body (food, drink, clothing, housing and sex) and to cooperate in obtaining them. The city of wealth (the “exchange” city) is one whose people aim to cooperate in attaining affluence and riches. They do not use affluence for anything else, but hold that affluence is the aim of life. Then there is the city of baseness and misery, whose people aim at enjoying the pleasure of food, drink and sex, in short the pleasure of what is sensed and imagined, and at preferring jest and play in every way and every form. Then there is the timocratic city, or city of honor, whose people aim to cooperate in becoming honored, praised, renowned and famous among the nations, glorified and esteemed in word and deed, and possessed of grandeur and splendor, either in the eyes of others or among themselves. Each of them strives according to how much he loves this, or how much of it he has been able to attain.

Then there is the city of domination, whose people aim to be the conquerors of others and to resist being conquered by others. Their one concern is the pleasure that victory alone brings them. The democratic city is one whose people aim to be free, each of them doing as he pleases, with his desire never held back in anything at all. The kings of ignorance are as many as its cities, and each of them governs the city over which he has power only to obtain his own desire and inclination. The aims of ignorance that can be set up as ends are those we have just enumerated.note

Such is the case with the actions by which happiness is attained. The more of them a person does, the more he repeats them and keeps at them, the stronger, more excellent and more perfect they make the soul that is apt to be happy. In the end it reaches such a degree of perfection that it no longer needs matter and comes to be free of it. Then it does not perish when matter perishes, nor does it need matter in order to endure. Once it has come to be separate from matter and incorporeal, the accidents that befall bodies insofar as they are bodies are removed from it. So it cannot be said of it that it moves or that it is at rest. One must then say of it the things that befit what is not a body. Whatever occurs to a person’s mind of what is predicated of body as body must be denied of the separate souls. To understand and conceive this state of theirs is difficult and unaccustomed. Likewise, by their separation from bodies, everything that used to attach to them and befall them is removed.

Among these souls that have separated there are souls that were in different material bodies. It is clear that the dispositions of the soul follow the temperaments of bodies, some more closely and some less, and that each disposition of the soul is as the temperament of the body it was in requires. So their dispositions must necessarily differ, because of the difference that was in those bodies. And since the differences among bodies go on without any fixed limit, the differences among souls also go on without any fixed limit.

The more numerous the similar separate souls become, and the more they join one another (and this joining is as intelligible joins intelligible), the more intense the pleasure of each one grows. Whenever those who come after join them, the pleasure of the newcomer increases through meeting those who went before, and the pleasures of those who went before increase as the newcomers join them. For each soul thinks its own essence and thinks its like many times over, and so the quality of what it thinks increases. The increase of what they encounter there resembles the way the power of the art of writing increases as the scribe persists in acts of writing. The joining of one soul to another, as each increases, takes the place of the succession of the scribe’s acts through which his writing grows in strength and excellence. And because those who join one another go on without end, the powers and pleasures of each and every one increase without end through all time to come. Such is the state of every group that has passed away.

Difference in quality is when two people have mastered the very same parts of writing, but one of them is stronger in what he has mastered and more practiced. That is difference in quality. Happinesses too differ in excellence in these ways.

That is why they sometimes take pleasure in the dispositions they acquire through those actions. People who are sick in body, many of the feverish for instance, find pleasant, because of their disordered temperament, flavors that are not of a kind to be enjoyed. They are pained by things that are of a kind to be pleasant, and they cannot taste sweet things that are naturally pleasant. In the same way, those who are sick in soul, through the corruption of their imagination, which they have acquired by will and habit, take pleasure in bad dispositions and bad actions, and are pained by beautiful and virtuous things, or do not imagine them at all. Among the sick there are some who are not aware of their illness, and some who even think they are healthy and are so convinced of it that they will not listen to a physician at all. In the same way, whoever among those sick in soul is unaware of his sickness, and even thinks he is virtuous and sound of soul, will not listen at all to a guide, a teacher or a corrector.

If those parts happen to mix in a way from which a human being comes to be, it returns and becomes a disposition in a human being. If they happen to mix in a way from which another species of animal, or something that is not an animal, comes to be, it returns as a form of that thing. These are the ones who perish and pass into non-existence, as beasts, wild animals and vipers do.

A grieving person, when the senses bring him something to occupy him, is not pained by what grieves him and is not aware of it. But when he is alone, without the senses, the pain comes back to him. Likewise, a sick person in pain, when he is busy with things, either feels the pain of his illness less or is not aware of it at all. But when he is alone, without the things that occupy him, he becomes aware of the pain, or the pain comes back to him. In the same way, as long as the rational part is occupied with what the senses bring it, it is not aware of the pain of the bad dispositions joined to it. But when it is entirely alone, without the senses, it becomes aware of the pain, the pain of these dispositions becomes manifest to it, and it remains in great pain for all eternity.

If others of its rank from that city join it, the pain of each of them increases through the other. For since those who join one another are without end, the increases of their pain through all time to come are without end. This is the misery that is the contrary of happiness.

Then there are those people of the virtuous city who are compelled and coerced into the actions of ignorance. Someone coerced into doing something is pained by what he does. So his persisting in what he is forced to do does not earn him a disposition of the soul contrary to the virtuous dispositions, one that would muddy that state for him and reduce his standing to that of the people of the wicked cities. That is why the actions he is forced into do not harm him. This befalls a virtuous person only when the one who has power over him is one of the people of the cities opposed to the virtuous city, and he is compelled to live in the dwellings of its opponents.

It is quite possible that among those who know those things through imitating images there will be some who notice the points of objection in those images and balk at them. These are of several kinds. One kind are those who seek guidance. Whenever something seems false to one of these, he is raised to another image, closer to the truth, that does not have that point of objection. If he is satisfied with it, he is left there. If that too seems false to him, he is raised to another rank, and if he is satisfied with it, he is left there. Whenever an image at some rank seems false to him, he is raised above it. If all the images seem false to him, he has the capacity to grasp the truth, and he is placed in the rank of those who follow the sages on authority. If he is not content with that and longs for wisdom, then, if that is within his capacity, he learns it.

Another kind are those who have some aims of ignorance, such as honor, affluence or pleasure in wealth, and who see that the laws of the virtuous city forbid them. Such a person sets about the opinions of the virtuous city intending to discredit them all, whether they are images of the truth or what is presented to him is the truth itself. The images he discredits in two ways: by the points of objection they contain, and by sophistry and deception. The truth itself he discredits by sophistry and deception. All this is so that nothing may stand in the way of his ignorant and base aim. These ought not to be made parts of the virtuous city. Yet another kind find all the images false because of the points of objection they contain. And since they are also slow of understanding, they mistake even the points of truth in the images, so that they find false even what contains no point of objection at all.

When they are raised to the level of the truth so that they may know it, their poor understanding leads them astray from it, so that they imagine the truth otherwise than it is. They then suppose that what they have conceived is what has been claimed to be the truth. When that seems false to them, they suppose that what has proved false is the truth that is claimed to be the truth, not what they themselves understood. As a result it seems to them that there is no truth at all. Whoever is thought to have been guided to the truth is, in their eyes, deluded, and whoever is said to guide others to the truth is a deceiver and a fraud, seeking rulership or something else by what he says. Some of these are driven by this into perplexity.

Others of these glimpse that the truth exists, as one glimpses a thing from afar or as a person imagines something in sleep, but they are kept from grasping it for reasons they see as beyond their reach. So they set about discrediting what they have grasped, no longer counting it as truth, and then they know, or think, that they have grasped the truth.

That is why it has been given whatever it can use to destroy anything harmful or useless to it, and whatever it can use to make use of what benefits it in its best existence. For we see many animals spring upon many others, seeking to ruin and destroy them without gaining any evident benefit from doing so, as if each had been made by nature so that nothing else in the world should exist but itself, or as if the existence of everything else were harmful to it. That is, it treats the existence of another as harmful to it even if nothing else comes from that other beyond the mere fact that it exists. Then each of them, if it does not aim at that, seeks to enslave others for its own benefit. Every species has been placed in this relation to every other species, and in many of them every individual has been placed in this relation to every other individual of its own species.

Then these beings were made to overpower one another and fight one another. The one that most subdues the others has the most perfect existence. The victor always either destroys some of the others, because it is in its nature that the existence of that thing is a deficiency and a harm to its own existence, or else makes use of some and enslaves them, because it sees that thing as existing for its sake. One also sees things occurring without order and the ranks of beings not preserved, and one sees that what comes to each being in its existence comes without its having deserved it, and that it exists not for itself. This, and things like it, is what appears in the beings we observe and know. Then some people said: this state is the nature of beings, this is their innate disposition. What natural bodies do by their natures is what animals that choose should do by their choices and wills, and what those that deliberate should do by their deliberation.

So they held that cities should be in a state of mutual conquest and strife, with no ranks or order within them, and no desert reserved for one person rather than another on account of honor or anything else. Each person should keep every good for himself alone and seek to overpower others for every good he can gain. And the human being who most subdues all who oppose him is the happiest.

Then many opinions arose from these in the cities, among the opinions of ignorance. Some held that there is no affinity and no bond, either by nature or by will. Each person, in their view, should diminish every other, and each should shun every other. No two should be bound together except out of necessity, nor unite except out of need, and when they do come together for some purpose, one should be the conqueror and the other the conquered. If something coming from outside compels them to come together and unite, this should last only as long as the need, and only while what comes from outside compels them to it. Once it is gone, they should shun one another and part. This is the malady of wild beasts among human opinions.

Some held that the bond lies in sharing the first ruler, who first gathered them together and governed them, so that through him they prevailed and won some good among the goods of the ignorant. Others held that the bond lies in oaths, alliances and pacts about what each person pledges of himself: that he will not turn away from the rest or abandon them, and that they will be as one hand in overcoming others and in fending off others’ attempts to overcome them. Still others held that the bond lies in similarity of character and natural traits and in a common language and tongue, and that difference comes from difference in these. This holds for every nation. So its members should love one another and be averse to everyone else, for nations differ from one another only in these three things.

Others held that the bond lies in sharing a household, and then in sharing places of residence. The closest bond is sharing a household, then sharing a street, then sharing a quarter. That is why people show solicitude for a neighbor, for the neighbor is the one who shares the street and the quarter. Then comes sharing a city, and then sharing the region in which the city lies. There are also things believed to create a partial bond among a small group, among a few people, or between two. Among them are long acquaintance; sharing food that is eaten and drink that is drunk; sharing crafts; and sharing an evil that befalls them, especially when the evil is of one kind and they meet, for then each is a consolation to the other. Others are sharing some pleasure, and sharing places where no one can be sure he will not need the other, as with companions on a journey.

So the group that overcomes the other in these respects is the one that triumphs; it is the one to be envied, and the happy one. These things are what is natural, whether in the nature of each human being or in the nature of each group, and they follow the natures of natural beings. And what is natural is just. Justice, then, is overcoming: justice consists in subduing whichever of them one comes upon. The vanquished is overpowered either in his bodily safety, so that he perishes and is destroyed and the victor alone remains in existence, or in his honor, so that he remains humbled and enslaved. In that case the victorious group enslaves him, and he does whatever is most useful to the victor for obtaining the good it has won and keeping it for good. So the victor’s enslaving of the vanquished is also part of justice, and the vanquished’s doing what is most useful to the victor is also justice. All this is natural justice. It is virtue, and these actions are the virtuous actions.

When the victorious group has obtained the goods, the one who did most toward winning those goods should be given more of them, and the one who did less should be given less. If the goods they won are honor, the one who did most is given more honor; if they are wealth, he is given more wealth; and likewise with the rest. This too, in their view, is natural justice.

This happens only when each is weak in relation to the other and each fears the other. As long as they stand toward each other in this state, they should share. But whenever one becomes stronger than the other, he should break the agreement and seek domination. Alternatively, something may come upon the two from outside that cannot be repelled except by cooperating and abandoning their contest, so they cooperate for as long as that lasts. Or each of them may have set his mind on something he wishes to win and see that he cannot reach it without the other’s help and partnership. Then they abandon their contest for the time being and help one another.

When equilibrium has come about between the parties for these reasons, and a long time has passed in that state, those who grow up in it without knowing how it began think that justice is what exists now. They do not know that it is fear and weakness, and so they are deceived in what they practice of it. Whoever practices these things is either weak, or afraid that someone else will do to him the very thing he himself feels a longing to do.

For all these are kinds of ruse and trickery, used against some people and for the benefit of others. They are ruses and snares for anyone who cannot win these goods by assault and in the open. They are a scheme for one who lacks the power to seize these goods openly and to attack with his own hands and weapons, without cunning and without help. He uses them to frighten and subdue others, so that they will give up all or some of these goods, and those who cannot take them openly or win them by force may obtain them.

For the one who holds fast to these practices is thought not to covet those goods, and people think well of him. So they trust him and do not guard against him, fear him or suspect him. His aim stays hidden, and his way of life is described as divine. His dress and appearance are those of a man who wants none of these goods for himself. This becomes the reason he is honored and revered and looked to for every other good. Souls submit to him and love him, so they do not object when he indulges his desire in everything. Rather, the ugly things he does seem fine to everyone. In this way he comes to win from all of them honors, positions of rule, wealth and pleasures, and to attain the good.

So those practices were devised only for the sake of these goods. The hunting of wild animals is sometimes done by open force and sometimes by stealth and trickery. In the same way, these goods are sometimes won by pursuing them openly and sometimes by stealth. One stalks them by making people believe, outwardly, that one’s aim is something other than one’s real aim, so that no one guards against one, fears one or opposes one, and one attains the goods easily. Consider the one who holds fast to these practices and persists in them. If he does so only to reach the thing for whose sake they were devised, that is, outward compliance with them in order to win one or all of those goods, then people envy him. He grows ever greater in their eyes for certainty, wisdom, learning and knowledge, and he is honored and praised. But if he does it for its own sake, and not to obtain these goods through it, people regard him as duped and deceived, wretched and foolish, devoid of sense, ignorant of his own interest, contemptible and of no account, and blameworthy.

Yet many people make a show of praising him, in mockery. Some encourage him for their own sake, so that he will not compete with them for any of the goods but will leave them alone, and the goods will be left in greater abundance for them and for others. Some praise his way and his doctrine out of fear that someone who does not follow his way would strip them of what they have. Still others praise and envy him because they too are deceived, just as he is. These, then, and others like them are the opinions of the ignorant, which have taken root in the souls of many people from the things observed in existing beings.

Others held that the group engaged in transactions should be a different people, those whom they conquer and enslave. These would then be the ones charged with this work: preserving the goods that the victors win, replenishing them and increasing them.

Therefore, since there is bound to be some nation or group that departs from what is natural for man and seeks to wrest from the other groups the goods they possess, the natural nation or group is compelled to have some of its people devoted to two tasks. One is repelling such people if they come seeking to overpower it. The other is wresting back its rights from them if they have seized them. So each group comes to have two powers: a power by which it fights and defends itself, and a power by which it conducts transactions. It does not have the power to defend itself because it does that by its own will, but because it is compelled to do so by what comes upon it from outside. These people are the opposite of those others. Those others hold that peace comes about only through something that comes from outside, whereas these hold that contest comes about only through something that comes from outside. From this arises the opinion held by the peaceable cities.

Others hold that beings already have their existence now. But other things have become joined and mingled with them, which corrupted them, hindered them from their activities and made many of them other than their true form. So, for example, what is not a man is thought to be a man, and what is a man is thought not to be a man. What is a man’s action is thought not to be his action, and what is not his action is thought to be his. As a result, man at this time does not do what it is his nature to do, and does what it is not his nature to do. He takes many things to be true when they are not, and many things to be impossible when they are not.

On both views alike they hold that this observed existence should be abolished so that that other existence may be attained. For man is one of the natural beings, and the existence he now has is not his natural existence. His natural existence is a different one. What he has now is contrary to that existence and hinders him from it, and the existence man has today is something unnatural.

Some held this of all the affections, such as anger, appetite and the like. They saw that these are the causes of preferring the things that are presumed goods: honor, wealth and pleasures. They also saw that the preference for domination comes only from anger and the irascible faculty, and that difference and mutual aversion come from this. So they held that all the affections should be abolished. Some held this of appetite and anger and what is akin to them, and held that virtue and perfection lie in abolishing these two. And some held it of other affections, such as jealousy, avarice and the like.

For this reason some held that what gives natural existence is different from what gives the existence we now have. They also held that the cause that produced appetite, anger and the other affections of the soul is contrary to the cause that gave the rational part. So some of them, such as Empedocles, attributed this to the contrariety of agents. Others, such as Parmenides in his exoteric opinions, and other natural philosophers, attributed it to the contrariety of matters. Besides these views, there is to the same effect what is reported from many of the ancients: “Die by will and you will live by nature.” For they hold that there are two deaths, natural death and voluntary death. By voluntary death they mean the abolition of the affections of the soul, appetite and anger. By natural death they mean the separation of the soul from the body. By natural life they mean perfection and happiness. This follows the view of those who held that the affections of the soul, appetite and anger, are in man by constraint.note

The views of the ancients that we have mentioned are corrupt. Other views branched off from them, and from these views religions spread in many of the errant cities.

So it is with everything as it now is. Its substance is not only what is understood from its name. It is this and also something else that we have not sensed or thought. Had that other thing been put in place of what now exists, we would have sensed or thought it; but what has come to exist is this. Someone might not say that the nature understood from each word is something other than what is now thought, namely infinitely many other things. He might say instead that it is this, and that it may also be something other than this that we have not thought. That makes no difference, for what is admissible and possible, when supposed to exist, entails no impossibility.

So too with everything that we consider to admit of no alternative, or to have no possible alternative: it may be otherwise. The existence of nine does not follow necessarily from multiplying, say, three three times; that is not its substance. What results from that multiplication could be some other number, or any of the other, non-numerical beings, whatever it happens to be, or something else that we have not sensed or thought. Indeed, there may be infinitely many sensibles and intelligibles that have not yet been sensed or thought, or that have not yet come to exist so as to be sensed or thought. So too with everything that follows from something else. It does not follow because the substance of that thing necessitated it, but because it happened so. An agent outside that thing brought the other into being in its presence, or at the time when that thing came to be, or in one of its states.

So every being that now exists has come to be as it is either by chance or because an agent from outside brought it into existence. What is understood by the word “man” could have turned out instead to be something other than what we think today. But that agent willed to make this intelligible, from among the things it was able to make. So we have come to sense and understand it in this way alone.

This is akin to the opinion of those who hold that, for anything we think today, its contrary and contradictory may be the truth. It is only that we happen to have fixed most firmly in our minds that what is true and correct is what we now see. On this view, what is understood by the word “man” may be something other than what is understood by it today, and indeed infinitely many things, on the assumption that each of those is the nature of this understood essence. If those things, together with what is thought today, are one thing in number, then what is thought today is not one thing in number, and what is thought from the word “man” is nothing other than what is thought today.

But if they are not one in number but many, with different definitions, then the name “man” is said of them equivocally. If, in addition, they can appear in existence at the same time, they resemble the things of which the word ʿayn is said today, and there would also be infinitely many things in number at once. If they cannot exist together but succeed one another, then they are contraries, or opposites in general. And if they are opposites, whether infinite or finite in number, it follows that everything we consider to admit of no alternative or no contradictory may also have its contradictory, contrary or opposite in general be true, either instead of it or together with its contrary. From this it follows that no statement whatever holds true, that everything said holds true, and that nothing in existence is impossible at all.note

For suppose the nature of some thing may be other than what is understood from its word today. It may be the nature of something whose identity we do not know, something that could come into existence and be sensed or thought and become understood, but that we do not think today. Then, for that thing whose identity we do not now know, its contrary or its opposite in general may also be possible, so that what is impossible for us may possibly not be impossible. By this opinion and those akin to it, philosophy is abolished, and impossible things are imprinted on souls as though they were true. For this view makes it possible for all things to have opposite existences in their substance, and infinitely many existences in their substances and accidents, and it makes nothing impossible at all.