 The natural hierarchy underlying a well-ordered society is spelled out in terms of al-Farabi’s distinction between ruling and serving functions. In the excellent city, itself the perfect image of a natural body as well as the cosmos as a whole, the criterion for rulership, in the vein of Plato’s Politeia, is intelligence and wisdom. This is to say that there is a ruler by nature who distinguishes herself by her intimate understanding of the cosmic order, its normative implications, human nature, and how to realize the discovered normative implications in view of the diverse talents and limitations determining the citizens’ “innate characters”. Ruling the city, as was already stated before, consists in providing precisely this kind of guidance: actualizing the various potentials in a well-coordinated manner which faithfully resembles the functioning of organisms, and thus seeking to facilitate every citizen’s pursuit of  happiness.[24]