  Zabarella reconstructed the process of intellection on the lines of sense-perception, that is that the intelligible species, produced concurrently by the phantasma and the illuminating agent intellect, moved the possible intellect into cognition. To be known, the phantasma, which was gained by sense-perception, had to undergo a double process. Itself material and consequently containing the universal structure needed in science only in a confused and unintelligible way, it had to be illuminated by the agent intellect, so that the universal in the individual was rendered distinct and intelligible. Since the illumination was generally required for any act of knowledge in the same way, its agent did not have to be an individual operating individually in the different acts of intellection, but rather could be an universal one, which rendered reality in general intelligible, thus serving as an all-embracing guarantee of intelligibility. The agent intellect could therefore be identified with God himself as the principle of intelligibility. When identifying the active intellect with God as the first cause of all that exists and can be known, Zabarella has clearly in his mind that the active intellect does no longer play a substantial role in this naturalistic philosophy of nature after this initial act of intellection (Kessler 2011, pp. 56–57).