Tahafut_al-Tahafut-transl-Engl-van-den-Bergh

bodies prior to them. Thus they were convinced of the existence of
incorporeal principles which are not potencies in a body.
Moreover, they had already found, concerning the human intellect, that
form has two modes of existence, a sensible existence in matter, as in the
stone there is the form of the inorganic which exists in the matter outside
the soul, and an intelligible existence, namely, perception and intellect,
which is separate from matter and exists in the sou. From this they
concluded that these absolutely abstract existences are pure intellects, for
if what is separated from another is already intellect, how much better
suited to be intellect will something be that is absolutely separates And so,
of necessity, they deduced that the objects of thought of those intellects
are the forms of the existents and of the order which exists in the world, as
is the case with the human intellect, for the human intellect is nothing
other than the perception of the forms of the existents, in so far as they
are without matter. They concluded, therefore, that existents have two
modes of existence, a sensible existence and an intelligible existence, and
that the relation between sensible and intelligible existence is like the
relation between the products of art and the arts of the craftsman, and
they believed therefore that the heavenly bodies are conscious of these
principles and that they can only guide what exists in the sublunary world
because they are animated. And when they compared the separate
intellects with the human intellect, they found that these intellects are
superior to the human intellect, although they have it in common with the
human intellect that their intelligibles are the forms of existents, and that
the form of each of these intellects is nothing but the forms and the order
of the existents it perceives, in the way that the human intellect is nothing
but the forms and the order of the existents it perceives. The difference
between these two kinds of intellect is that the forms of the existents are a
cause of the human intellect, since it receives its perfection through them,
in the way that the existent is brought into being through its form, whereas
the intelligibles of these intellects are the cause of the forms of the
existents. For the order and arrangement in the existents of this sublunary
world are only a consequence and result of the order which exists in these
separate intellects; and the order which exists in the intellect which is in us
is only a consequence of the order and arrangement which it perceives in
the existents, and therefore it is very imperfect, for most of this order and
arrangement it does not perceive. If this is true, there are different degrees
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