 Aristotelian ethics provided the foundation of the edifice. The imperative to know, and to know rationally, which is the motivation behind Avicenna’s conception and then realization of his scientific system, is based on Aristotle’s concept of happiness as the activity of that which differentiates humans from all other organic life, of the mind (Nicomachean Ethics X.7, 1177b19–25): “the activity of the intellect is thought to be distinguished by hard work (spoudê, ijtihād), since it employs theory, and it does not desire to have any other end at all except itself; and it has its proper pleasure …. Complete happiness (eudaimonia, saʿāda) is   this.”[8]   Avicenna subscribed fully to this view of human happiness in this world, and extended it to make it also the basis for happiness in the next—as a matter of fact, he made it a prerequisite for happiness in the next. Only the contemplative life while in the body prepares the intellect, which has to use the corporeal external and internal senses to acquire knowledge and gain the predisposition for thinking the intelligibles, for the contemplative life after death. In understanding the goal of human life in this manner Avicenna was again being true to the Aristotelian view of divine happiness as the identity of thinker, thinking, and thought (Metaphysics XII.7, 1072b18–26). Using the words of Aristotle, Avicenna paraphrases this passage as follows: “As for the foremost ‘understanding (noêsis, fahm) in itself, it is of what is best in itself;’ and as for ‘what understands itself, it is’ the substance ‘of the intellect as it acquires the intelligible, because it becomes intelligible’ right away just as if ‘it touches it,’ for example. ‘And the intellect,’ that which intellects, ‘and the intelligible are one and the same’ with regard to the essence of the thing as it relates to itself…. ‘And if the deity&lt;’s state&gt; is always like the state in which we sometimes are, then this is marvelous; and if it is more, then it is even more marvelous’”   (Geoffroy et al. 2014, 59).[9] 