Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I

15Quality, however, cannot be a body, because two bodies cannot coexist in the same place without mutual obstruction, whereas several qualities are mingled together in the same thing. Thus in the matter of honey three qualities—a yellow color, sweetness, and fragrance—are found together everywhere. For every drop of honey is yellow, sweet, and pleasing to the nostrils.

16There is this further consideration: every body by its nature extends in length, breadth, and depth, whereas quality does not appear to be extended by its own nature. Otherwise there would be no unextended quality anywhere. Yet certain unextended qualities inhere in a point, in unity, in number, in harmony, and in powers. Quality, therefore, is not a body.

17More especially, if extension belonged to quality by nature, the wider quality became, the stronger it would become. Yet dispersion makes it weaker. Hence quality, though in itself somehow indivisible, is divided within bodily extension. For division occurs solely by reason of quantity, since division is always drawn out from one into many. Nevertheless, even in body quality preserves a certain property of an indivisible nature. As the Platonists hold, the whiteness in any part of a white body should not properly be called a part of the whiteness in the whole body. It should instead be called the whiteness of a part rather than a part of whiteness. For if you divide a white body into several parts, in every part the same character of whiteness will remain, together with a like power and action; but its extent will not be the same or equal. Division therefore belongs properly not to quality but to body by reason of quantity. Action belongs to quality, especially when it is concentrated into a small compass. Quality is certainly not body; above all, when gathered into a point it becomes incorporeal. It follows that operation arises through the power of an incorporeal nature, not from the matter of bodies.