Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

3From this it is evident that a bodily point cannot be the seat of an intelligible species. But might the continuity of points, or the body’s own extension, be its seat? By no means. Every form received in a divisible subject becomes divisible, just as the whiteness of snow is divided when the snow is divided. Thus, if that species is received by the breadth of a body, it too becomes divisible. Yet this is impossible, as I shall now show. If the species is cut into parts, those parts must be said to be either wholly alike or unlike; neither alternative can be admitted. They cannot be wholly alike. For if they are alike in such a way that each part preserves the complete account of the whole species, just as each drop of water preserves the complete account of the whole water, the intellect will surely behold the whole in every part. One part of the species will suffice for understanding the whole thing, and the rest will be superfluous. Moreover, a species everywhere perfectly like itself would deceive the intellect which it leads to knowledge by that very likeness. The intellect’s judgment would be utterly confused when distinguishing parts from the whole, both in every thing composed of parts and especially in a thing composed of diverse natures. It could distinguish neither one part from another nor the parts from the whole. Yet the account of a part as part is truly one thing, and that of the whole as whole another. The mind always affirms this in judgment, since the whole itself cannot be a part, nor a part the whole. We therefore hold that the parts of an intelligible species cannot be wholly alike. The strongest reason is this: the mind understands a thing’s parts as parts and its whole as a whole, and truly distinguishes the whole from the parts. Since it could not truly distinguish them unless some natural distinction existed within them, it follows that the parts of an intelligible species—if it has parts at all—must differ by some natural diversity both from one another and from the whole. Another argument follows. When parts wholly like one another and the whole unite to compose some whole, they complete it only by increasing its number or magnitude, as we see in grains of wheat and drops of water. Where the form does not vary although some inward change occurs, there is in a certain sense only increase or decrease. If, then, the species in the mind grows together from parts of this kind, it will be some number or numbered thing, a heap, or something continuous. Through it we shall therefore understand only numbers and numbered things, certain magnitudes, or figures. Such a species will belong to imagination and phantasy rather than to the mind.