Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/178

 of all things, and from the  ' aql proceeds the Universal Soul, and from that Soul comes primal matter: when this primal matter becomes capable of receiving dimensions it becomes secondary matter, and from that the universe proceeds. The Universal Soul permeates all matter and is itself sustained by the perpetual emanation of itself from the  ' aql. This Universal Soul permeating all things yet remains one; but each individual thing has a part-soul, which is the source of its force and energy, this part-soul having a varying degree of intellectual capacity. The union of soul and matter is temporary; by wisdom and faith the soul tends to be set free from its material fetters, and so to approach nearer to the present spirit or  ' aql. The right aim of life is the emancipation of the soul from matter, so that it may be absorbed in the parent spirit and thus approach nearer to the Deity. All this is but a repetition of the teaching of al-Farabi and the neo-Platonists, slightly coloured, perhaps, by Sufism, and expressed less logically and lucidly than in the teaching of the philosophers. In general character it shows a tendency towards pantheism, akin to the tendency we have already observed in certain of the Mu'tazilites. God, properly so called, is outside, or rather on such a plane that man does not know, and never can know, anything about Him. Even the  ' aql is on a plane other than that on which the human soul lives. But the Universal Soul which permeates all things is an emanation from this Spirit, and the Spirit emanates