 Avempace enquires further on the issue of pleasure and knowledge, and we can abbreviate it by saying that the highest form of pleasure requires continuity and that continuous pleasure is attained not only by intellectual knowledge but also by knowledge of an eternal object. Metaphysical knowledge is man’s uppermost stage and source of highest pleasure. Averroes (d. 1198), however, would express doubts whether man’s uppermost stage is a natural perfection or divine gift for Avempace, an issue which Alexander Altmann researched (1965). Altmann concluded that Avempace defended the uppermost stage as a mystical experience, similar to that preached by the Sufis, and in any case we can agree that Avempace saw the uppermost stage as a divine gift.