At this point it will be useful to make some preliminary observations as an introduction to what we have to say and to the various opinions we shall set forth.

To begin with, the love with which lovers love one another is divided into five kinds, corresponding to five different kinds of men: divine (ilāhī) among (the most advanced mystics), the people of unification; intellectual (ʿaqlī) among the gnostics; spiritual (rūḥī) among the elite; natural (tabīʿī) among the commonality; and bestial (bahīmī) among the base. We mention these kinds of love first so that the intended meanings will present no difficulty to the reader when he comes across them in the appropriate contexts.

Considering the matter further, we find that all the causes of love and the reasons for it can be reduced to three. The first is a thing (maʿnā) that God displayed to (ābdā ilā) this world and that he named beauty. He likewise displayed a person whom he endowed with this thing and called him beautiful. [12] Again, he willed to make manifest other things to set over against these things in order to reveal by means of juxtaposing them in pairs his design (sirr) in (creating) them. So he displayed a perceiver of the beautiful and set him over against the beautiful person. Thus he made manifest, by the perceiver's perception of the beautiful,that thing we call love, and he endowed the perceiver with it, so that he became a lover. In this way love was set over against beauty, and the perceiver of the beautiful, [namely, the lover], over against the thing perceived to be beautiful, namely, the beloved.

These three constitute the sum total of love's causes. There are no others. Moreover, we find them all laudable according to both revealed law and reason. Hence those who scorn love and seek to discredit it have no valid objection; for any defect is accidental to it, and that which is sound and of enduring reality cannot be corrupted by an accidental defect. Let there be no misunderstanding. Having said this, we shall nowproceed to demonstrate in separate sections the excellence of each of the things we have mentioned, God willing.