  While not here mentioned explicitly, it is indeed the active intellect that, in the context of Maimonides' Neoplatonized Aristotelian context, is the cosmic source of the “intellectual overflow” under discussion in this passage. As such, the active intellect emerges as the cosmic underpinning for Maimonides' mechanics of providence: The more in touch a person's intellect is with the active intellect, the more we may say of her that she is “living providentially.” As Maimonides notes, “providence watches over everyone endowed with intellect proportionately to the measure of his intellect…” (G 3.51, 624). Taken in the context of Maimonides' theory of active intellect as that cosmic intermediary responsible for human intellectual actualization, the above claim suggests that “divine providence” is found in one's ability to conjoin to the active intellect. This, of course, is a decidedly naturalized understanding of providence: far from a hand of God intervening in the lives of men, divine providence here emerges as the properly directed life that one who conjoins with active intellect—and who, as such, attains the heights of knowledge available to the human mind—will be more readily able to live.