Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

First argument. A body does not receive images suited to sensation.

1I do not know how, in the course of the preceding argument, we entered upon the second part of this inquiry, in which we intend to prove our proposition from the power of sensation. Let us now pursue this part further. Whenever a body receives anything, it receives it in a bodily manner: the parts of the thing in its own parts. Nor can it contain anything larger than itself, just as wax receiving an impression from a seal never receives a figure larger than the wax itself. If wax possessed a sense by which it judged the size of the figure, it would plainly judge the figure to be only as large as the impression it contained. Nor can wax receive another figure unless it either loses the first or so confuses both within itself that they can scarcely be distinguished from one another. Accordingly, if the soul is a body, it will receive the images of bodies through the eye only in a bodily manner, so that the image of Plato in Socrates' eye will be no larger than Socrates' eye. Socrates' soul will therefore suppose Plato to be no larger than his own eye—or at any rate no larger than the brain to which the image is transferred from the eye, and ultimately no larger than Socrates' body. For if Socrates' soul has magnitude, it is no larger than his body. Hence, if the whole soul receives Plato's image within itself, the image it receives is no larger than the soul itself; therefore it will never judge anything to be larger than Socrates' body. Moreover, when it receives images of Xenophon, Alcibiades, and Phaedrus, it must either lose the image of Plato or thereafter hold all the images so confused together that it cannot distinguish one man from another.