Empedocles said: “The first thingsthat the first originator (mubdiʿ) originated were love (maḥabbd) and victory (ghalabd) and out of love and victory were originated [49] the simple spiritual substances, the simple material substances, and the compound corporeal substances.”

Heraclitus of Ephesus said: “The very first thing among those things that first existed was an intellectual light that cannot be perceived by our intellects because our intellects were originated fromthat intellectual light, which is truly God, glorious and sublime. The first thingsthat were originated and were the beginning of these worlds were love and strife (munāzaʿa). Fromlove came into being the upper worlds extending down to the sky, which is the sphere of the moon. What extends from the sphere of the moon down to this earth came into being fromstrife.” Heraclitus also used to say: “The creator (al-bāriʾ) glorious and sublime, opens for those souls in every age a space so that they may see his pure light proceeding from his true essence. Then their eros and longing grow more intense, and so they remain forever.”

The author of this book said: The statements of these two philosophers indicate that all the love that is in this world [50] is among the effects of that original love that was the first thing originated byGod. For from it emanated all that is contained in both the lower and upper worlds, [including] both divine and natural love.

By divine love I mean that which exists between God and man, and by natural love that which exists between human lovers, in all its varieties, and which is among the effects of that (original) love through the intermediary of the intellect, the soul, and the physical nature. Natural love, having thus fallen far away from God, has been changed and altered from love's original purity to that which you can observe. But divine love is pure, because it is received through the channel of the intellect (alone), and the intellect receives it from God directly, without any intermediary.