Having thus far dealt with the concept of ʿaql, its form, its attributes, and its power of comprehending, the author proceeds to state that such comprehending power is set at naught unless light is available to ʿaql. Such light illumines its path and guides and leads it.
The Creator has provided for His creation, the use of instinct, as an aid to meeting the requirements, the dangers and hazards of living. And this is so in a pronounced degree with the animal world. For example, a newly hatched duckling, if thrown into the water, instinctively swims. It has not to be guided or taught. But a human infant is utterly helpless. It needs tending, teaching, and training. By itself the infant cannot survive. The knowledge of how to so survive has to come from outside. One rightly ponders, why the requisite knowledge given to animals has been denied to man, in the beginning. The answer lies in the view held, that man being endowed with ʿaql, his problem was not one alone of survival, but also more important, his emancipation was to be provided for, as the author points out, through the intervention of the light from the Higher Source.