Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I

21For he sees the one and the other in the same gaze, like an eye that in one glance beholds a multitude of stars in the heavens. Do you not know, impious Averroes, that the good constituted by the order of the universe surpasses the excellence of any single part? For even your Aristotle, in Book XI of his work on divine things, affirms that individual parts are referred, as to an end, to the good of the order that exists in the whole. If, therefore, God knows any other noble thing—as you do not deny—he will know above all the order of the universe. Such an order can be understood only if all the more precious and baser things are distinguished from one another; the whole order consists in their intervals and proportions.

22Remember, however, that each of the very things commonly called the basest was fashioned with the most exacting art, just as were those regarded as the most precious. Again, things which, when considered in isolation, usually seem less beautiful nevertheless harmonize most fittingly both with themselves and with all others in this entire order and in the very ordainer of the whole. Orpheus sang all this in his hymn to Apollo: “You hold the bounds of the whole universe. The beginning and the end are your care; through you all things flourish. You bring the whole sphere into harmony with your resounding lyre.”