Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

13We must therefore conclude that the mind’s first concepts are simple. Of the things known through them, some are such that although they appear divisible, they are known precisely under the aspect in which they are not divided at all, and our notion of them is therefore indivisible. Others are wholly simple, and our perception of them is consequently simple, provided that intelligence is equal to the things understood. If concept, notion, and perception are simple, then the intelligible forms from which they arise are also simple. If so, the mind too is simple, since it is the subject of simple things. And because the simpler a thing is, the more indissoluble it is, the mind—which, as we have said, reaches the highest degree of simplicity in knowing—also reaches the highest degree of an indissoluble nature in living. For intelligence is life’s reflection back into itself. Therefore, if through intelligence, which follows life, the mind attains the highest simplicity, and that simplicity precedes an indissoluble nature, then far more through life, which precedes intelligence, it attains the indissoluble degree that follows upon simplicity itself.