Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

Name: Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II
Author: Marsilio Ficino

Books V–VIII · Latin with an independent English translation

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Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume IIBook VI · Chapter 13 · §§ 5–7

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Latin Page · Branch 115 of 191

Book VI · Chapter 13 · §§ 5–7

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Latin

p. 224

Immo vero neque prior anima nostra servabitur, si substantia sua assidue subterfugiat. Unde novas animas cogatur sibi semper adsciscere, per quas anima iugiter innovetur. Verum quonam pacto recens anima cum priori consentit?

Quomodo, si continue effluit aliquid ab anima nostra et influit in animam alimentum, sicut fieri in carne videmus, manet voluntas eadem in plerisque semper? Idem mos, opinio eadem et scientia, perpetuaque eiusdem rei memoria? Quomodo post decennium agnoscimus illa statim visa quae ante decennium videramus, nisi earundem rerum nobis acceptae quondam incolumes adhuc serventur imagines? Quis eas servat nisi idem qui acceperat et iudicaverat animus? Quo pacto servat, si non servatur? Qua ratione non stante animo stabunt imagines et scientiae?

Neque dicat quisquam stare diu animum, si corpus fuerit. Quod enim corpus sub caelo manere in eodem statu potest diu, caelo ipso tam celeriter percurrente? Proinde si corpus aliquod tale sit ut maneat aliquantum, corpora tamen subtilia et agilia minime omnium permanebunt. Anima vero si corpus sit tenuissimum sit oportet, ut visceribus suffusa facillime cuncta vivificet. Ideo et ossa et nervi diutius consistent quam anima, immo etiam caro, quae tamen brevi tempore labitur et renovatur in dies. Erit autem anima flatus alicuius instar, instabilis prorsus et momentis singulis evanescens. Quapropter neque diem quidem unum scientias rerum imaginesque servabit.

Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II: Book VI

p. 225

Indeed, not even our former soul will be preserved if its substance is continually slipping away. It will therefore be forced always to summon new souls to itself, through which the soul is ceaselessly renewed. But how does a newly arrived soul agree with the one that came before it?

If something is continually flowing out of our soul and nourishment is flowing into it, as we see happen in the flesh, how does the same will endure always in most people? How do the same character, the same opinion and knowledge, and the perpetual memory of the same thing endure? How, after ten years, do we recognize at once things we had seen ten years before unless the images of those same things, once received by us, are still preserved intact? Who preserves them if not the same soul that had received and judged them? How can it preserve them if it is not itself preserved? If the soul does not remain, by what account will images and knowledge remain?

Nor let anyone say that the soul can endure for a long time if it is a body. What body beneath the heavens can remain long in the same state when the heavens themselves course so swiftly? Even if some body can remain for a while, subtle and agile bodies will endure least of all. Yet if the soul is a body, it must be exceedingly subtle so that, poured throughout the organs, it may most readily give life to them all. Bones and sinews will therefore endure longer than the soul—indeed, even flesh will, though flesh slips away and is renewed in a short time, day by day. The soul will be like a breath, wholly unstable and vanishing at every moment. It will therefore preserve its knowledge and images of things not even for a single day.

440.This disclosed editorial division develops the further consequence that the allegedly bodily soul cannot itself remain the same.

441.Subterfugiat and adsciscere retain Ficino's images of substance slipping away and the soul recruiting replacements.

442.This disclosed editorial division turns the replacement hypothesis against the continuity of will, character, opinion, knowledge, memory, and recognition.

443.The repeated questions and the repetitions of eadem, idem, and earundem are retained as Ficino's pressure on personal identity.

444.This disclosed editorial division tests whether an extremely subtle bodily soul could preserve memory even briefly.

445.The swift heavens, enduring bones and sinews, daily-renewed flesh, and breath image retain the ascending rhetorical force of Ficino's reductio.

About This Reading Edition

Volume II continues Ficino’s inquiry into the immortality of the soul through Books V–VIII. Its arguments consider the rational soul’s self-motion, its relation to the body, sensation, and the powers of the mind. The Latin and independent English translation follow the supplied edition’s facing pages and matching comparison units.

Historical Text and Translation

The Latin reading text is independently established from the Florence 1482 editio princeps (M1482), collated against the Paris 1559 printing (G1559), with the Paris 1641 Opera used only as a late control. Abbreviations are expanded, spelling and punctuation are conservatively normalized, and consequential readings are recorded in the apparatus.

About Diotimos Editions

Diotimos Editions prepared this independent English translation in the voice established in Volume I, preserving Ficino’s argumentative sequence, metaphors, technical distinctions, repetitions, conditions, purposes, and qualifications. Editorial notes and witness variants accompany their passages as numbered notes. The edition and source statement, contents, and reading guidance are also retained. The source locator register remains available in the downloadable edition.