Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I

Above the form divided throughout a body stands an indivisible form, namely, the soul.

1We have now ascended from body to quality. In Platonic usage, we call every form that is divided in body a quality. But are we to halt at this level, after the manner of the Stoics and Cynics? By no means. Quality is a certain form, and the nature of form is simple, efficacious, and agile in acting. Hence the natural philosophers often call form act. A nature of this kind is tainted in the womb of matter: from simple it becomes divisible and impure; from active, liable to being acted upon; from agile, inept. Hence quality is neither pure form, nor true form, nor perfect form. It cannot be the first form if it is not pure, for everything must first exist, at least according to its kind, before it is contaminated.

2Nor can quality be the first form if it is not true. For how does the mind judge this form not to be altogether true? Only from the point at which it beholds some truer form; compared with that form, this one falls short and is shown to be false in a certain respect. Where, then, does the mind see true form itself? It surely beholds it either outside itself or within. If the mind looks upon it outside itself, then a certain true form superior to quality exists somewhere in nature. If the mind contemplates that form within itself, true form is not absent from the mind, and therefore is not absent from the world. Moreover, truth is more powerful than falsehood, since truth can exist without falsehood, whereas falsehood cannot subsist without truth. Nothing is called false unless it is at least true that it is false. Nor does anything have force unless it is true that it has force; nor is anything truly understood to be false except through truth. Nothing is called false unless it deceives, and it deceives only through an image of truth. If, therefore, truth is more powerful than falsehood, and if a less true form—namely quality—has a place in the order of things, then true form is found in that order much more surely. This is especially so because, in proportion as intellect is more excellent and truer than sense, intelligible form must be more excellent and truer than sensible form. It is clear from these considerations that quality cannot be the first form, both because it is not pure and because it is not true.