Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

Seventh argument: a body is not wholly present in several places at once.

1Neither bodies nor forms divided throughout bodies can be wholly present at once in several parts or places. Yet the seminal power is whole in every particle of seed. For however many particles the seed is divided into, that many animals arise—a fact seen most clearly in the eggs of fish. If a whole animal springs from any drop of seed, the whole seminal power lies hidden there. This power is the soul's instrument, serving generation. How much more, then, is the whole soul present in every particle of the seed and of the body. Since the soul's power is whole in each, is not the vegetative power also whole in every seed of a plant, when from each it produces an entire plant? The vegetative soul, too, is at first enclosed in a tiny root or shoot; then, as the tree grows, it pours itself into every branch. When at last the branches have dried or been cut away, it draws itself back again into the root. Plotinus and Porphyry hold that this soul is without quantity: it is enclosed equally in the smallest things and fills the greatest.