reason is not merely a less perfect way of knowing God than intuition; it is and—except in the case of rare prophetic individuals—must be our first means of knowing Him. Reason does not merely precede intuition, but prepares the way for it. Thus, it is by the use of reason that Hayy, Ibn Tufayl’s paradigm of mankind, reaches his first knowledge of God’s nature; he would remain ignorant even of God’s existence were it not for reason.
