Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I

7God is therefore one and simple: namely, one supreme unity, one supreme truth and goodness—the one God. One, I say, for the Platonists in three respects. First, because he is supreme unity. For if everything supreme is unique, what is more unique than supreme unity? Every particular multitude of innumerable things is reduced to its own unity: the multitude of innumerable human beings to one human species, that of horses to one equine species, and similarly with the rest. Next take all the particular unities which are bounded by a determinate number—that is, the species of things—and gather them into one common unity, namely God, the sovereign of species.

8This is so that, just as the infinite multitudes of individuals are referred to the finite unities of species, so the finite unities of species may be referred to the single unity above species. It is fitting that, just as each particular order of things is directed to its own single principle, so the universal order of things should be referred to one universal principle. And just as particular matters are referred to one matter, and all the members of the world to one body, so all the natures of the world are referred to one nature, all its lives to one life, all motions to one motion, and all movers to one mover of the world. Further, whenever several things diverse from one another in nature conspire in a certain single and mutual order, that order must be in them because of the order they bear to some one thing. Such is the mutual order of the parts of an army, which exists because the whole army is ordered to one commander. The fact that things diverse from one another acquire this—that they are united by mutual communion—does not arise from their proper natures, through which they are diverse; for by those they are rather divided. Nor does it arise from several diverse arrangers. Such arrangers, precisely through their discrepant natures and insofar as they differ, do not tend toward one order. Thus the mutual order of the many either came about by chance or was instituted by one first arranger directing all things to one end.