Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

Fifth argument. The soul as a whole senses everywhere.

1Do you not know that a part of a body cannot be equal to the whole body, and that a form extended through different parts of the body therefore cannot exist whole in every part? Otherwise a part would equal the whole. I grant all this. What follows? The soul is nonetheless present whole to every part of the body, because the whole soul senses the affection of every bodily particle. If the foot happens to be hurt and feels pain, the eye at once turns toward it, the hand immediately moves to it, the mouth cries out, and nearly all the other members respond in like fashion. This could never happen unless that which belongs to the soul in every bodily part sensed the injury even in the foot. What is absent could not sense what has happened there. Nor should we suppose that some messenger which does not sense what it reports performs this office, for what does not sense cannot report. Neither can an affection propagated through continuous bodily bulk always account for the event by keeping the soul's other parts elsewhere from remaining unaware, since pain is not always produced everywhere. Rather, the whole soul senses what happens in one small part of the foot, and it senses it only there, where it happens. The soul is therefore present whole and at once to each part, because it senses as a whole and at once in every part.