Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I

17God must furthermore be altogether uniform, because he exists above the forms of all things; indeed, he must also contain every form, because he is the maker of all. Intellectual nature alone makes it possible for him to be at once uniform and omniform. Through this form, then, God, in beholding his very self, conceives himself as the proper principle of all forms. For he sees within himself whatever is proper to each thing when he sees to what degree each can imitate the divine form and to what degree it can fall short of it. Thus, for example, when he understands his own form as imitable in the mode of life but not of cognition, so to speak, he conceives the form and idea of plants. When he understands it as imitable in the mode of cognition but not of intelligence, he conceives the proper idea of an animal, and all the other ideas in the same way. Certainly, in everything produced not by chance but by nature or design, the end of production must be the form of the work produced. An efficient cause directs its action toward a form by nothing other than a form remaining within the cause itself; nor can it direct its action toward definite forms except through definite forms or definite principles of forms conceived within itself.

18Since the marvelous order of the world cannot be constituted by chance, which is devoid of order, there must be in the maker's own intelligence a form in whose likeness the effect is made. And because the order of the universe holds the highest place in God's design, the principal idea within him is the idea of universal order. Yet no account of an order or a whole can be possessed unless one possesses the proper accounts of all the parts from which that whole is constituted, just as an architect cannot conceive the form of a building unless he has conceived the proper accounts of its parts. The proper accounts of all things are therefore in God; the forms of things derive their distinctness from the very source from which they derive their being. Nor is the divine simplicity less simple because of the multitude of ideas, since God beholds them all through one form and in a single gaze. The divine essence is called an idea not insofar as it is simply essence, but insofar as it is the exemplar of this species or that. Consequently, insofar as several accounts are understood from one essence, they are called several ideas.