Diotimos Library · Renaissance Collection · Bilingual Edition
Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I
Proem and Books I–IV · Latin with an independent English translation
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Latin Page · Branch 113 of 174
Book II · Chapter 13 · §§ 17–19
Latin
p. 228An si tu omni consilio fuisses arboribus et animalibus provisurus, aliter providisses? Non aliter, sed neque tam bene. Consilium igitur consilio tuo melius ista disponit. Alioquin videres quotidie quam plurimis tam membra quaedam sua quam instrumenta ubique deesse; item ex equi semine nasci canes, ficus ex malis, et membra hominis annexa leonibus, hominibus asinorum; cadere stellas, ascendere lapides. Nunc vero, quia singulae mundi partes certis seminibus ortae, distinctis figuris praeditae, recta via, congruis temporibus et ordinibus, pulcherrime et commodissime certos petunt terminos atque repetunt, consequens est ut eodem modo moveantur quo et illa quae arte et consilio moventur humano.
Si modo eodem, ergo eadem paene arte eodemque consilio, et tanto praestantiore quanto pulchrius et stabilius ordinantur. Consilio, inquam, non ambiguo et mobili, sed certo penitus atque subito, et intuitu potius quam discursu. Si enim in opere non est mora vel transgressio usquam vel retractatio, non est ambiguitas in opifice. Intuitum huiusmodi per translationem quandam consilium appellamus, non quod ibi alia investigentur ex aliis, sed quod alia aliorum gratia fiant. Solent inertes homines de artificiis consultare; at vero qui artem perfecte callet nihil consultat amplius, sed ita habitu facit sicut natura formis. Quod si est ars alicubi perfectissima, ibi certe est unde mirabile hoc opus mundi disponitur.
Artem huiusmodi in natura fortasse locabis sensus omnis experte. Ego vero sensu carere te dicam, si tam fueris alienus a sensu ut non sentias: si bestiolae quaeque terrenae sentiunt, oportere multo magis totum mundum et artificem omnium naturam sensum habere; sensum, inquam, rationalem, si rationabilius sua opera ordinat quam hominis ratio. Admirationem autem minuit diuturna consuetudo.
Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I: Book II
p. 229Had you been able to exercise every possible care in providing for trees and animals, would you have provided for them differently? Not differently—and not nearly so well. Some counsel better than your own therefore orders these things. Otherwise you would see, every day, very many creatures everywhere lacking both some of their own members and the instruments they need; you would see dogs born from a horse's seed, figs from apples, human limbs joined to lions and asses' limbs to human beings; stars would fall and stones rise. Instead, every part of the world springs from its appointed seed, is endowed with a distinct form, and by a straight path, at fitting times and in fitting orders, seeks and seeks again its appointed limits with the greatest beauty and fitness. It follows that these parts are moved in the same manner as things moved by human art and counsel.
If they are moved in the same manner, they are moved by nearly the same art and counsel—and by an art and counsel as much more excellent as their order is more beautiful and stable. This counsel, I say, is not uncertain and changeable, but wholly sure and immediate; it proceeds by intuition rather than by discursive reasoning. If there is no delay, deviation, or reconsideration anywhere in the work, there is no uncertainty in the craftsman. By a kind of metaphor we call such intuition ‘counsel,’ not because one thing is investigated there by way of another, but because some things are made for the sake of others. Unskilled people deliberate about crafts; one who has mastered an art perfectly no longer deliberates, but acts from settled skill, as Nature acts through forms. If perfect art exists anywhere, then surely it exists in the source from which this marvelous work of the world is ordered.
Perhaps you will place this art in a Nature devoid of every kind of perception. I, however, shall say that you yourself are without perception if you have become so estranged from it as not to perceive this: if every little earthly animal possesses sensation, then still more must the whole world and Nature, the maker of all things, possess it. I mean a rational perception, if Nature orders her works more rationally than human reason does. Long familiarity, however, diminishes our wonder.
Socrates
Reading Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I · Book II · II.13.17–II.13.19
Ask about a concept, passage, contradiction, or connection.
Socrates will begin with this book and its sources.About This Reading Edition
Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology places the immortality of the soul at the center of an extended philosophical ascent through body, soul, angel, and God. This exact page-aligned Renaissance edition presents the authorial Proem and Books I–IV in a newly established Latin reading text with an independent English translation prepared by Diotimos Editions.
Historical Text and Translation
The Latin reading text is based on the Florence editio princeps printed by Antonio Miscomini on 7 November 1482 and principally collated against the Paris 1559 printing, with a 1641 Opera printing used only as a late control and OCR aid. Abbreviations are expanded, spelling and punctuation are conservatively normalized, and substantive departures among the witnesses are documented in the edition’s apparatus.
About Diotimos Editions
Diotimos Editions prepared this independently worded English translation in house. It aims for a dignified but readable modern register while preserving Ficino’s argumentative sequence, metaphors, technical distinctions, repetitions, conditions, purpose clauses, and direct appeals; long periods are divided only where clarity requires it.
Rights
Ficino’s Latin source work is in the public domain. The 2026 English translation and Diotimos editorial matter are original to this edition and remain © 2026 Diotimos.