Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I

Above the mobile soul stands the immobile angel.

1Thus far we have discovered a form above the constitution of the body, which we shall call the rational soul. Its essence always remains the same, as the stability of will and memory signifies. Its operation, however, changes, because it does not think all things at once but by degrees, and it nourishes, enlarges, and generates the body not in an instant but over time. Its natural power remains, because its natural vigor endures perpetually, neither intensified nor diminished. Its acquired power changes, because it passes from potency into act, from act into habit, and conversely.

2Heraclitus, Varro, and Manilius ascended this far; but we must ascend higher. This form cannot be the principle of the whole of nature. For a stable operation, which completes its work to perfection in a single instant, is more perfect than one that requires time. A life wholly present at once, united with itself and not standing apart from itself, is more complete than one stretched across different moments of time and thus, in its inward acts and affections, somehow drawn away from itself. Above this form, then—whose outward operation wanders through time and whose life, that is, its inward operation, is dispersed as though in a current—there must be placed another, more sublime form, whose operation is stable and whose life is wholly united at once.

3For the perfect must always be placed before the imperfect. Just as the perfect things in any kind are those which are such through their own nature, so the imperfect are those which are not such through themselves; otherwise they would be such in the fullest degree. If, then, imperfect things do not exist through themselves, they are compelled to exist through higher things.