Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

2From this it is clear that intellect is not only incorporeal but also immortal. For through itself and by its own operation it always forms and perfects itself, always understanding and willing. This is nothing other than continually making, preserving, or renewing itself—the state the apostle Paul called daily renewal. It follows that intellect never departs or withdraws from its own perfecter and preserver, since it can never be absent from itself; and therefore it is always formed and perfected. Moreover, if the end of natural generation is a kind of immortality, much more is immortality the end of intellectual generation. But because nature begets offspring outside itself, its immortality is fulfilled in the succession of those who are born. Mind, however, generates within itself both itself and other things, insofar as it conceives the principles of itself and of all other things whenever it understands either itself or other things. It follows that the power of this immortality is preserved in the mind itself as parent. Another argument of this kind also lies concealed here. To be well is more excellent than simply to be. Whoever therefore provides well-being for himself can much more provide being for himself. Intellect appears to give itself well-being when it forms and perfects itself both through contemplation and through conduct. It can therefore also provide itself with being according to form in such a way that it never ceases to be. I pass over Proclus’s statement that the soul, since it is the principle of generation, so begets and gives life to itself that it has its essence from itself. In sum, he affirms of every indivisible substance existing in its own essence that it both produces and contains itself; but of every divisible substance, even heaven itself, he says that it must be produced and contained by another. But let him see to that himself. There is, moreover, another argument concealed here. When intellect first comprehends and loves its own operation, and through that its own power and substance, then beyond doubt it acts upon itself and therefore also through itself. Nothing stands as a medium between intellect and intellect itself. Add that just as a body does not act upon itself because it does not act from itself, so intellect is judged to act from itself because it acts upon itself. If it acts from itself upon itself, it also acts through itself. For if both termini of the action are within it, the medium is within it as well. What, then, prevents intellect when separated from the body from acting and living, especially since its operation, which is fulfilled from itself, upon itself, and through itself, necessarily comes to be and remains within itself?