Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

5Therefore contemplative virtue does not advance gradually from one part of itself to another; it shines forth all at once and immediately. Moral virtue likewise is a certain steadfast will to choose whatever reason dictates. If it possessed many parts and came into being by degrees, part of this will would be present while part was still absent. To the extent that one part was present, we would will; to the extent that another was absent, we would also not will. By the same power of the soul, then, we would simultaneously will and not will the same thing, which would be very like a monstrosity.

6Since virtue, then, comes into being in an indivisible moment, it too is indivisible, provided that the nature of each thing follows its proper origin—especially since virtue also has an indivisible end. When a thing’s origin and end are indivisible, why should the thing itself not also be indivisible? What is the end of virtue? The end of moral virtue is to purify and separate the soul from the divisible body; that of contemplative virtue is to apprehend the incorporeal and universal principles of things, placed far beyond divisible bodies. You see that the end of each kind of virtue, like its origin, is something indivisible, and therefore that the virtues themselves must be judged indivisible. Both kinds of virtue reveal this nature of theirs most clearly in the following fact: many branches of knowledge coexist in the intellect and many moral virtues in appetite, yet their number does not confuse them with one another; rather, they increase and illuminate one another. Within ourselves we discern the conception belonging to one branch of knowledge separately from another, so that we can think of either without considering the other. Thus we hold in the mind ideas of the arts—united, I say, and at the same time distinct—so much so that we can speak and fashion something proper to the exemplar of one Idea even if we do nothing according to the exemplar conceived by another. Acts of intelligence such as these cannot be bodies. They remain together in the same bosom of the soul without dislodging and driving one another out or becoming confused through mutual mixture. The same reasoning applies to the moral virtues.