Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

Second argument. The five senses must be brought together at a single center.

1Sight apprehends colors, not voices; hearing, voices alone; smell, odors. The mind compares color, voice, and odor with one another—or, put another way, judges that color is one thing and voice another, and similarly with the rest. The power through which the mind judges in this way knows both the colors and the voices, together with the other things it compares. How could it say that color is one thing and voice another unless it knew both at once? What, then, is this power? Sight? Certainly not, for sight does not recognize voices. Nor is it hearing, which knows nothing of colors, nor any one of the five senses. Each reports only one kind of thing and cannot compare several things with one another. There is assuredly one inward power of the soul, like a center to which the five surrounding instruments of sense report different things from every side. This one power distinguishes all the objects and activities of the five senses. Do not say that there are two or more inward powers of the soul through which it makes this comparison. Grant, if you wish, that there are two. Then answer this: whenever the soul compares a color with a voice, does each power apprehend both objects—the color and the voice—or does one apprehend one and the other apprehend the other? If each power apprehends both, what need is there of two powers, when one is sufficient for the work of comparison and one accomplishes as much as both? Nature does not fail in necessary things, nor does she abound in superfluities. But if each power knows only one object, neither will compare the two with one another. Yet some power does compare them. There is therefore another power, beyond the pair just imagined, through which the soul compares these several things with one another.