Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

4Indeed, if this essence is its own form, nothing can ever come between it and its form. For if some middle term were ever to fall between the essence and its form, that term would necessarily be nearer to the form than the essence itself is. Yet the essence itself is that very form. Something would thus be nearer to it than it is to itself, which is the greatest absurdity of all. No middle term, therefore, inserts itself between the essence and its form; no intervening thing separates it from its form. Nor does it separate itself from its own form of its own accord. Thus it departs in no way from itself or from its form. Nor does it depart from the law of its fashioner, for it was created under the law that it should subsist in itself, and so it always remains. Nothing casts it down from that state: not the soul itself, for each thing preserves its own form and dignity as far as it can; not the higher causes, because they preserve it under the same law by which they produced it; and not inferior things, because what is higher is not conquered by what is lower. Since, then, the soul is pure form and departs neither from its own form nor from the law of its fashioner, it undoubtedly remains immortal.