Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

20Who can deny that the soul is the source of motions, when it possesses motions of its own and exemplars of bodily motions? In these it acts against the nature of body, in a certain manner generating itself—or, so to speak, as though corrupting, increasing, diminishing, and transporting itself, and performing the rest. It is therefore fitting that through the soul's presence living bodies acquire this power: they alter, nourish, and increase themselves, generating within themselves something from themselves; and again they proceed of themselves wherever they have judged they should go. Things that do not live accomplish none of these acts, as though spontaneous motion were proper to life.