In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful!

These are remarks concerning principles and admonitions concerning fundamentals. He whose way is made easy will be enlightened by them, but he whose way is made difficult will not benefit [even] from what is clearer than they are. Now we rely on [God’s] guidance.

Once again, I state my wish and repeat my request for high frugality in giving away the contents of these parts to anyone who does not meet the conditions that I posit at the end of these remarks....

Some people believe that every body has joints that hold together parts which are not bodies, but of which bodies are composed. They also claim that such parts are not receptive to division either by fracture, by cutting, by imagination, or by hypothesis, and that those parts of them falling in the middle of the organization prevent the two extremes from contact [with each other] (p. 153).¹

They do not know that if the middle [part] is such, each of the two extremes receives (p. 154) from it something other than that which is received by the other, and that...

You must know that people point to directions that do not change, such as the directions of upward and downward (p. 258). They also point to directions that change by hypothesis, such as the right and the left of what surrounds us and what resembles them (p. 259).¹ Let us bypass what is by hypothesis.

As for what occurs by nature, it does not change in any manner.

Further, it is impossible for the position of the direction to be determined in a void or in a uniform plenum.² A uniform thing has no limit that is more deserving than...

Return to yourself and reflect. If you are healthy, or rather (p. 344) in some states of yours other than health such that you discern a thing accurately, do you ignore the existence of yourself and not affirm it? To me this [ignoring and not affirming] does not befit one who has mental vision. One’s self does not escape even the one asleep in his sleep and the intoxicated in his intoxication, even though its representation to oneself is not fixed in memory.

Further, if you imagine yourself at the beginning of its creation with a healthy intellect and a...

Perhaps you desire now to hear a discussion about the powers of the soul that produce our actions and movements. Let the following chapters be of this kind.

The movements of the preservation and generation of the body are managements in the nutritive material intended to assimilate this material in order [1] to replace what has been decomposed; [2] to (p. 432) increase the growth in a purposive proportion that is preserved in the dimensions of the parts of the nourished thing—by means of this, the bodily constitution is completed; and [3] to contract from this nourishment a surplus...

You must know that [some] people’s imagination may be overcome [by the opinion] that the existent is sensible, that the existence of that whose substance is not grasped by the senses is supposed impossible, and that that which in itself is not specified by a space or a position, such as the body, or by the cause in which it resides, such as the states of the body, does not have a chance to exist.

It is possible for you to reflect on the sensible itself and learn from this the falsity of the statements of such people; for both...

It appears to the imagination of the commoners that the dependency of a thing,¹ which they call effect, on [another] thing, which they call agent, is in respect of the sense according to which the commoners call the effect an effect and the agent an agent. In this respect the latter brings into existence, fashions, and causes, while the former is brought into existence, is caused, and is fashioned. All this amounts to saying that after nonexistence a thing acquires existence from another thing (p. 58).

They may also say that if a thing is brought into existence, the need...

Do you know what enjoys complete richness? It is that which is not dependent on anything external to it in three things: in its essence (p. 119), in dispositions that take hold of its essence, and in perfective dispositions in relation to its essence. Thus that which is in need of something external to it in order to have a complete essence (p. 120), or of a state that takes hold of its essence, such as figure, beauty or something else, or of a state that has a certain relation, such as knowledge or the capacity for knowledge and power...

Reflect on how existence began [descending] from what is noblest to what is [less] noble, until it ended in matter (p. 242). After that it returned [upward] from what is basest to what is [less] base, and [from there it moved from] the noble to the nobler,² until it reached the rational soul and the acquired intellect.³

Since the rational soul, which is a certain subject for the intelligible forms (p. 243), is not imprinted in the body in which it subsists, but only possesses an instrument through that body, the change of the body by death—due to which...