 Abd al-Latif stresses the primacy of the most universal cause, which is, therefore, further from its effect with respect to the causes nearer to the effect and hence apparently more important. The First Cause transcends any possibility of our knowledge. If knowing the true nature of things in fact means knowing their causes, since by definition the First Cause has no causes that precede it, it is unknowable in its true nature. It can only be known by approximation, through a description of the secondary causes. A long section, which describes intellect, follows this theory of the transcendent ineffability of the First Cause which precludes any proper predication. The intellect is with eternity, above time, and is not subject to division, because everything which is divisible is divisible in magnitude, in number, or in motion, but all these kinds of division are under time. It is one, in so far as it is the first thing which originated from the First Cause, but it is multiple with respect to the multiplicity of the gifts that come to it from the First Cause. The intellect knows what is above it—the gifts that come to it from the First Cause—and what is below it—the things of which it is the cause. But intellect knows its cause and its effect through its substance, that is to say that it perceives things intellectually. It grasps intellectually either the intellectual things or the sensible ones. The First Cause, which is the Pure Good, pours all that is good into the intellect and into all that which exists through the mediation of the intellect. There is, however, a certain fluctuation in ‘Abd al-Latif’s attempt to establish a perfect conformity between the First Cause as presented in the Liber de causis and the First Principle presented in his chapters devoted to the paraphrase of Metaphysics Lambda. According to ‘Abd al-Latif God precedes the intellect in ruling things: he orders the intellect to govern. But, having stated that the self-subsistent substance is not generated from something else, ‘Abd al-Latif maintains that intellect does not need anything other than itself in its conceptualizing and formation (tasawwuri-hi wa taswiri-hi), that it is perfect and complete eternally, and that it is the cause of itself.