Chapter One — Setting Forth the Purpose of This Discipline

It is well known that every real species (nawʿ) has a perfection (kamāl) proper to it, and that the perfection and completeness (tamām) of the species consist in its possessing that perfection. It is also well known that, if it has a gradual perfection, it attains its end (ghāya) only after other antecedent preparatory factors have come to exist, whether these be of its own genus (jins) or of another genus. Every such preparatory factor is a cause of the species’ readiness and of its disposition (istiʿdād) for what comes after it.

Now man—since he is a real species, distinguished from the other coordinate species by complete discursive (fikrī) apprehension (al-idrāk)—and since this complete discursive apprehension is acquired by him gradually, his path to the attainment of his completeness is the path of the other kinds whose perfection is gradual. And although the root of the perfection—namely apprehension—is present in him in a general sense, as in the other species, nevertheless in respect of his apprehension he has modes and attendant features—in respect of the ordering of the apprehensions, their qualities, and their determinations—which befall him until the perfection is made complete.

The purpose of this discipline, then, is to know what befalls the human being insofar as he attains perfection through knowledge (ʿilm) and apprehension—namely, the ordering found therein, its determinations, and its concomitants. As for the purpose of its detailed investigations, what has already been said spares us stating it.