 Given the purpose of this article, the account of the intellect as used in the psychological context of the On the Soul deserves deeper consideration (al-Fārābī LI: 12–35; LC: 215–221; OI: 71–78). This approach is exhaustively examined both in The Treatise on the Intellect and in The Virtuous City. In the latter there is a complete account of the way in which the rational or intellectual faculty acts (al-Fārābī VC: 196–211). Once al-Fārābī has explained the role of the imaginative faculty as that which provides the intellect with impressions attained through the senses, he next explains the process whereby they become intelligibles in act. Following Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition, al-Fārābī describes the intellect as being itself potential or, using Alexander’s terminology, an innate “natural disposition” (ἐπιτηδειότης / isti‘dād) (al-Fārābī VC: 198–199; Geoffroy 2002: 204). This kind of intellect is frequently called “potential”, “material”, or “passive”, and is simply the rational faculty with which all human beings are endowed.