Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I

29But whatever exists has this property: it seeks a good that is absent and rests with the greatest delight in a good that is present. Nature, sensation, and intellect plainly seek an absent good and embrace one that is present. Nature devoid of sensation does all this through a certain inclination, sensation through appetite, and intellect through will.

30Therefore, since God is—to speak in the Peripatetic manner—the first being, who will deny that the divine intellect freely embraces through will its present good, which is every good? Just as in his truth he sees all true things, which become true by its illumination, so in his goodness he wills all good things, which arise through its propagation and become good through its perfecting them. Every mind, moreover, produces works by willing rather than by seeing. In seeing it folds forms inward; in willing it unfolds them outward. In seeing it looks to truth, whose proper character is purity; in willing it reaches the good, whose proper character is diffusion.

31Third argument. The cognition belonging to sense and even to intellect itself, because it is like something imaginary in created things, produces no substantial effect except through affect, which seems to be something essential. Hence the more vehemently it affects, the more powerfully it acts. This is indicated in a certain way by the eye of the ostrich fixed most avidly upon its egg.

32If God's intelligence in creating is more efficacious than the ostrich's gaze in brooding—and indeed if it is of immeasurable efficacy, as is clear because it needs neither a subject, an instrument, nor time in creating—we can infer that the affection of will is most powerful in the divine intelligence. Add that this affection is also most delightful, if indeed the most perfect intelligence, which always and everywhere enjoys the most complete and perfect object, must be the most delightful.