Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd were well known in the universities of medieval Europe under the Latinised forms of their names, Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes. This view was passed on to the Islamic philosophers, who expounded a more or less Platonized Aristotelianism. According to Al-Farabi, human beings, like any natural species, have a perfect state toward which their actions tend. Compare Plato, Protagoras , 322. Republic 369-371, Aristotle, Politics , I.2.
Human beings differ in their natural capacity to acquire the virtues required in a ruler.
Therefore not every chance human being will possess art, moral virtue, and deliberative virtue with great power. Therefore the prince occupies his place by nature and not merely by will. The person with the most superior natural capacity and acquired virtue must realise these perfections in nations and cities. In using persuasion, the prince should go back to the things he studied demonstratively and look for persuasive arguments and similitudes and devise methods of political oratory. To be a truly perfect philosopher one has to possess both the theoretical sciences and the faculty for exploiting them for the benefit of all others according to their capacity.