 The philosopher, it turns out, is the one human type provided with all of the dispositions needed to actualize the natural, moral, intellectual, and practical virtues that bring about human flourishing in the fullest sense. Thus, he alone is said to lack nothing pertaining to perfection. What human perfection and flourishing ultimately consist of is a state of intellectual illumination by the Active Intellect, in which the passive or material intellect of the perfect individual perceives itself as reaching the level of attachment to, and, indeed, union with its light. The Active Intellect belongs to the divine hierarchy. More specifically, it is the tenth and lowest of the incorporeal Intelligences in the philosopher's cosmology, which presides over the sub-lunar sphere and all it contains. Insofar as this Intellect comprehends the forms of everything that exists or occurs within our world, it is also capable of communicating what it knows, either partially or completely, in the form of intellectual illuminations (the aforementioned “light”) to any individual whose material intellect is suitably prepared to receive it. Here, knowing follows the Aristotelian paradigm of becoming one with the thing known, albeit in an immaterial way. Attachment to or union with the Active Intellect thereby contributes to human perfection and flourishing by first providing the individual with the pleasures of discovery and genuine intellectual understanding and, second, influencing the subsequent activities of the individual in practical matters so completely that his limbs perform only the most perfect actions, at the most appropriate times, in accordance with the best conditions, “as if they were the organs of the Active Intellect itself.” Broadly speaking, the attainment of intellectual union is presented as culminating in a life of rational self-sufficiency in which one always recognizes what the most rational course of action is and acts accordingly.