God alone is “necessary being,” and so the supreme reality. Space, time, etc., belong to “actual being,” and whatever necessity they possess is derived from God. The objects studied in physical science are only “possible being,” which may or may not become “actual being.” God alone is necessarily existent through all eternity: He is the truth in the sense that He alone is true absolutely, all other reality is so only in so far as it is derived from God. From God by emanation comes the _`aql_ or “Agent Intellect,” and from this proceeds the intellect or reason which differentiates the rational soul in man from the soul in other creatures. To every man this intellect is given, and in due course it returns to the “Agent Intellect” which was its source. The soul’s possible activity, independent of the body with which it is associated, proves its immortality, but this immortality does not imply separate existence, but rather reabsorption in the source. From the _`aql_ also proceeds the universe, but not like the reason of man by direct emanation, but by the medium of successive emanations. Ibn Sina was the last of the great philosophers of the East. Two causes combined to terminate philosophy proper in Asiatic Islam. In the first place it had become closely identified with the Shi`ite heresies, and was thus in bad repute in the eyes of the orthodox; whilst the Shi`ite sects themselves, all of the extremer kind (_ghulat_), which had devoted themselves most to philosophical studies, had also taken up a number of pre-Islamic religious theories, such as transmigration of souls, etc., which were detrimental to scientific research. Neo-Platonism had shown itself at an earlier period prone to similar tendencies. As a result the Shi`ites tended towards mystic and often fantastic theories, which were discouraging to the study of Aristotelian doctrines. The second cause lay in the rise of dominant Turkish elements, Mahmud of Ghazna, then the Saljuk Turks, which were of uncompromising orthodoxy, and abhorred everything which was associated with the Shi`ites or tended to rationalism. For all that it left permanent marks in Asiatic Islam in two directions: in orthodox scholasticism and in mysticism. We have already noted that Muslim b. Muhammad Abu l-Qasim al-Majriti al-Andalusi (d. 395-6), as his name denotes, a native of Madrid, brought the teachings of the _Brethren of Purity_ to Spain, and so incidentally aroused an interest there in the philosophy which had been studied in the East. For some time no important results appeared, then followed a series of brilliant philosophical writers and teachers, deriving their inspiration partly from the _Brethren_, and partly from the Jewish students. CHAPTER VII SUFISM