Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

Sixth argument. Whatever the intellect receives, it receives with its whole self; it would not do so if it were bodily.

1No body contains anything within itself except through a quantitative correspondence by which its whole embraces the whole thing, one part embraces one part, a larger part of itself embraces a larger part of the thing contained, and a smaller part a smaller. The intellect does not receive things in this way. Whatever it receives, it receives with its whole self, for it receives in the same manner as it understands; and whatever it understands, it understands with its whole self. Suppose someone says that the intellect has two bodily parts, one of which receives and understands a thing while the other does not. We shall refute him by affirming that the part which receives and understands is in truth the intellect—since intellect is named from understanding—whereas the part which does not understand is not intellect. Therefore, the nature which truly is intellect receives and knows with its whole self any thing presented for understanding. Thus, when the intellect understands a human body, it also understands that body’s members. With its whole self it knows the whole human body, and with its whole self it knows each of its members. For the same intellect which compares each member with every other and relates every member to the whole must know both the individual members and the whole body. You must not posit two parts in the intellect, one knowing one member and the other another, for neither of them could make the comparison. If the intellect receives as it knows, it assuredly receives with its whole self both the whole body and every one of its members. Yet no body and no bodily form can receive anything in this manner; nor can one body be equally matched to every body. How could the body of a dog be matched to the bodies of an ant, a horse, an elephant, and the sun? The mind, however, is equally commensurate with all bodies, the greatest as well as the least, since it embraces them all in understanding in the same way. And it is matched not only to them, but in a certain sense even to supreme equality itself: it rightly measures all things that are more or less equal by their approach to supreme equality, placing itself between any things that participate in equality and equality itself. If the mind is thus most nearly matched to supreme equality, it is not assailed by any disproportion among unequal qualities.