 Without Avicenna’s attempting to provide a philosophical reason for it (Ilāhiyyāt, IX, 4, 407, 4–8; Išārāt, ed. Dunyā, III, 228–230), the last intelligence does not lead to a further intelligence but instead looks after the sublunary world and human beings. Indeed, the last intelligence provides forms for the sublunary world. Called—with an expression that was to be in great favor in the Latin medieval world (which came to know it also through al-Ghazālī) “bestower” or “giver of forms” (dator formarum; Arabic: wāhib al-ṣuwar; but, for Avicenna, this name can be applied to all intelligences: Ilāhiyyāt, IX, 5, 411; 413), the last Intelligence or Agent Intellect (al-ʿaql al-faʿʿāl) represents the principle of the physical constitution of the world as well as the founding principle of human intellection (which at least in some texts Avicenna explains through the idea of donation). In general terms, the sublunary world is explained by means of the metaphysical structures used by Aristotle: matter and form, potentiality and act. These structures are nevertheless sustained by the emanative pattern which explains the world not only as regards its origin, but also as regards its “life”: generations and natural transformations are conceived as the result of a process by which matter becomes specifically prepared to receive the gift of forms from above. So to the active donation of forms by the Agent Intellect, Avicenna adds the influence of the spheres, the mutual interactions of the sublunary elements as preparatory causes and the reception of matter. The dynamic ideas of potency and act are thus elaborated and complicated: the idea of potency—quwwa—to which Avicenna adds those of preparation (istiʿdād) and specific or proper preparation (istiʿdād ḫāṣṣ)—is interpreted in the light of emanation: the potency of matter is reception in time and is in fact possibility in time. In the temporal dimension of the sublunary world—where what becomes is something after not having been it, possibility requires a substratum (matter) and becomes material potency: it thus explains a non-eternal thing, which is brought into existence “after being non-existent” (Ilāhiyyāt, IV, 2, 181, 7–12).