Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I

8Angel does not bind these extremes together, for he rises wholly toward God and disregards bodies. Rightly does the most perfect creature, the creature nearest to God, become wholly divine and pass into God. Nor does quality connect the extremes: it inclines toward body and leaves higher things behind; abandoning incorporeal things, it becomes corporeal. Thus far all are extremes: the higher and lower things flee from one another, lacking a fitting bond. But when that third essence is set between them, it proves able to hold fast to higher things without deserting the lower, and so within it the higher are joined to the lower. It is both motionless and mobile. In the former respect it agrees with higher things, in the latter with lower. Since it agrees with both, it desires both. By a certain natural impulse it therefore ascends to higher things and descends to lower. In ascending it does not desert the lower, and in descending it does not leave the sublime behind. For if it abandons either, it will incline toward the other extreme and will no longer be the true bond of the world. It acts exactly like air midway between fire and water, agreeing with fire in heat and with water in moisture. With fire it is always warm; with water, moist. There it grows fine and bright like fire; here in turn it grows dull like water. Better still, it acts like the light of the sun. That light descends from the sun into fire and fills the fire without deserting the sun. It always clings to the sun and always fills the fire as well. It perfects the air, yet is not infected when the air is infected. In the same way the third essence must at once cling to divine things and fill mortal things. While it clings to divine things, it knows them, because it is spiritually united to them and spiritual union begets knowledge; while it fills bodies, it gives them life by moving them from within. It is therefore the mirror of divine things, the life of mortal things, and the connection between the two.