Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I

95Thus, in Orpheus, a Bacchus presides over each of the Muses, signifying that their powers are drunk with the nectar of divine knowledge. Hence the nine Muses and nine Bacchuses revel around the one Apollo—that is, around the splendor of the invisible sun. But enough has been said about the names of divine souls.

96Let us bring this whole discussion briefly to a close by saying, in the manner of the ancients, that those people deserve utter ridicule who admit that the impure parts of the elements, from which living creatures are composed, possess life and reason, yet deny these to the complete and pure elements—as though a part were better than the whole. They would also deprive the world of life and sensation, though it gives life to plants that do not spring from seed and sensation to animals that are not born through mating. We therefore distinguish three ranks of rational souls. In the first stands the one soul of the world; in the second, the twelve souls of the twelve spheres; and in the third, the many souls contained within each sphere. All that has been related here concerning the souls of the spheres according to the opinion of the Platonists should be affirmed only when, after careful examination, it has met with the approval of a council of Christian theologians. For Plato too, speaking in his own person in the *Epinomis*, says of these things by way of classification: It is impossible for the earth, heaven, all the stars, and the bodies composed of them to revolve through years, months, and days in so exquisite an order, and to bestow every good upon us all, unless a soul is either present to or dwelling within each one.