Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

Seventh argument. In receiving the forms of things, the intellect does not lose its own form; bodies do.

1Bodies commonly lose their own forms when they receive the forms of other bodies. For how could water put on the heat of fire unless it put off its own coldness? And if its own form sometimes remains when a foreign one has been received, it becomes less perfect. Thus the sweetness remains in wine, and water poured into it also becomes sweet, but the flavor is thereby weakened. The mind, however, receives the forms of all things when it recognizes them all and turns them over within itself once they are known; yet in receiving them it neither loses nor weakens its own form. For since the character of each form is always disclosed by its activity, and the activity of intellect is understanding, it follows that the form of intellect is—if I may speak so—natural intellectuality itself. This is judged most perfect when its activity, understanding, is most perfect. This intellectuality is more perfect in proportion as it reaches more forms of things, for it becomes more sublime, more swift, and more lucid. Therefore, in receiving the forms of all bodies, the intellect not only neither loses nor slackens its own form, but—contrary to the nature of body—perfects it to the highest degree. It penetrates the substances of bodies and beholds all things in each: by composition it sees mixtures in simple things, and by analysis it beholds simple things within mixtures. The mind thus seems to be in all things in such a way that it is itself all things in each. Again, it stands outside and above everything bodily. Otherwise it could not separate bodily things from incorporeal things and distinguish the incorporeal from them. If it is all things within all bodily things and is also outside them all, by nature it rules them all. Consequently, no bodily violence casts it down from its own state.