Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

8Perhaps, in order to prove that the species and the mind’s conception have parts contained beneath them, the Epicureans will take refuge in numbers. They will infer that the species differs from its parts as four differs from two, and two from one. Although we have already refuted this, let us answer it once more in the following way. Do they wish the parts of the species and of the conception, which they call knowledge, to be themselves branches of knowledge? If not, they will create knowledge out of ignorances, as though they were to construct whiteness out of figures. If they do, we argue against them as follows. Philosophers agree that every branch of knowledge has its own object about which it is concerned, and they call that object the thing known. Since those branches of knowledge which are parts of one body of knowledge cannot lack an object, let the Epicureans tell us whether the proper object of each part is the same as the object of the whole or different. If they answer that it is the same, none of the branches will be a part; each will be the whole, since it is equal to the whole. For where objects are equal, the corresponding branches of knowledge are equal as well. But if they admit that the objects differ, another absurdity follows: knowledge of the whole object will exist in addition to knowledge of the parts, and the whole will not be known from knowledge of the parts, since the several branches do not converge into universal knowledge.