 We have seen that Fârâbî lists God as one of the things investigated by the universal science. God is investigated by the science that “investigates what is common to all the things that are” because God is “the common principle of all the things that are”: he belongs to all beings in common, not because he is an attribute predicated of all beings, but because he is a cause of all beings. More precisely, he is a cause of all beings quâ being: that is, he is a cause, to the things that are, of the fact that they are, rather than of other facts about them. As Fârâbî says a bit further down,