The essence of the First Mover, or of God, as well as of the Sphere-Spirits, is found by Ibn Roshd in Thought, in which unity of Being is given him. Thought which is identical with its object is the sole positive definition of the Divine Essence; but Being and Unity absolutely synchronize with such Thought. In other words, Being and Unity are not annexed to the Essence, but are given only in Thought, just like all universals. Thought produces everywhere the general in the particular. It is true that the universal as a disposition is operative in things, but the universal qua universal exists in the understanding alone. Or, in possibility (or potentiality) it exists in things, but it exists actually in the understanding,—that is, it has more Being,—a higher kind of existence,—in the understanding than in things. If now the question is asked,—‘Does Divine Thought take in merely the general, or does it take in the particular too?’, Ibn Roshd replies, ‘It does not directly take in either the one or the other, for the Divine Essence transcends both of them. Divine Thought produces the All and embraces the All. God is the principle, the original Form, and the final aim of all things. He is the order of the world, the reconciliation of all opposites, the All itself in its highest mode of existence.’ It follows of course from this theory, that there can be no talk of a Divine Providence in the ordinary sense of the term. 5. Two kinds of Being we know: one which is moved, and one which causes motion, though itself unmoved,—or a corporeal and a spiritual. But it is in the spiritual that the higher unity or perfection of all Being lies, and that too in graded order. It is thus no abstract unity. The farther the Sphere-Spirits are from the First, so much the less simple are they. All know themselves, but in their knowledge there is at the same time a reference to the First Cause. The result is a kind of parallelism between the corporeal and the spiritual. There is something in the lower Spirits which corresponds to the composition of the corporeal out of Matter and Form. What is mingled with the purely spiritual is of course no mere Matter, that could suffer anything, but yet it is something resembling Matter,—something which has the faculty of taking to itself something else. Otherwise the multiplicity of intelligibilia could not be brought into harmony with the unity of the Spirit which apprehends them. Matter suffers, but Spirit receives. This parallelism, with its subtle distinction, has been introduced by Ibn Roshd with special reference to the human Spirit. 6. Ibn Roshd is firmly of opinion that the human soul is related to its body, as Form is to Matter. He is completely in earnest on this point. The theory of numerous immortal souls he most decidedly rejects, combating Ibn Sina. The soul has an existence only as a completion of the body with which it is associated.