In Maimonides' idea of God's pure activity of intellection, we are reminded of Al-Farabi's own Aristotelian account. Not to be confused with “active intellect” (to which we will return below), God (“the First”) is described by Al-Farabi as an “intellect in actu,” or, an “actual intellect” (al-‘aql bil-fi‘l, literally, the intellect “in act,” or “actualized”) (PS 70). Following on this idea, and mirrored most evidently in the quote from Maimonides above, Farabi follows Aristotle in describing God as the thinking subject who thinks himself: