 Alexander of Aphrodisias developed a line of interpretation that made the active intellect a non-human intellect and identified it with God. His commentary on the De anima is lost. Instead we have the De anima that he wrote following the principles that Aristotle had established in his own De anima. There, Alexander identifies the active intellect with “the first cause, which is the cause and principle of existence to all the other things” (Alexander, De anima 89. 9–10). The intellect so understood is not only the cause of human thought; it is also the cause of the existence of everything that there is in the universe. This intellect can also be an object of thought. When this happens, this intellect enters in us from without: “this is the intellect from without which comes to be in us and is imperishable” (Alexander, De anima 90.19–20). Alexander makes it abundantly clear that this intellect alone is imperishable and as such it is also divine. A similar but not identical attempt to expand on the elliptical remarks that Aristotle has left on the active intellect can be found in the On Intellect, a short essay attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias and preserved in the collection of brief exegetical writings known to us as Mantissa.