Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

Fourth argument: because it rules over matter.

1Indeed, its immortality is especially apparent in this: the very first matter of things, which is moved and given form by soul, must be everlasting. Art imitates Nature. Art proceeds in its works in this order: it impresses one form after another upon some underlying matter, though none of those forms has matter proper to itself. Clay, for example, has no form proper to any one vessel, but receives various forms in succession from the potter; and when the vessels are broken, the clay remains, from which others are made again. In the same way, Nature herself, the artisan of things, has a certain underlying matter of her own, devoid of every form and prepared equally to receive them all. Just as, at the highest level of things, God is pure act, in need of nothing and the maker of all forms, so at the lowest there must be something that is pure potency, lacking all things, formless in itself, and receptive of every form. Thus beneath the universal artisan and beneath Nature lies universal matter, an impartial receptacle for forms of every kind. It is called primary matter and is equally subject to the forms of the elements and of other bodies. From natural power it receives now this form, now that, while by its own nature it has none. For it would not be the lowest thing if it possessed any perfection or natural capacity for action from a form proper to itself; nor would it be fitted to receive another form opposed to its own. If coldness were proper and natural to matter, how could it receive heat? And if moisture were proper to it, how could it receive dryness? If you wish to find this hidden matter, observe the mutual transformation of the elements. When we see the form of water appear where the form of earth was before, we cannot say that the newly arrived form of water is received in the form of earth. The two are in a certain way opposed, since earth contains dryness and water moisture. Thus the form of earth does not receive the form of water; instead, when the watery form approaches, the earthly form passes into chaos. Yet the form of water cannot exist without a subject, and no new subject has entered in the generation of water. The same matter that was subject to the earthly form therefore now assumes the form of water. This is the argument used by Timaeus the Pythagorean. Again, when the sun strikes the sea with its rays, thins water into vapors, and generates air from water, it has certainly taken some small portion of watery body from the element of water.