Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

2A form spread through a body—whiteness, for example—undergoes what the body itself undergoes in this respect: an affection of one part does not necessarily alter all the other parts. What prevents one part of the body and its whiteness from being stained and disfigured while the rest remains unpolluted? Yet nothing happens in any particle of a living creature without at once concerning the whole soul. Our Augustine confirms this Platonic mystery as follows. The soul extends through the whole body it animates, not by a diffusion through place but by a certain vital intensity. It is present whole and at once through every particle: not smaller in smaller parts, nor larger in larger ones, but more intense in one place and less intense in another; whole in all and whole in each. Only so can it sense as a whole whatever occurs in the body, even when it does not occur in the whole body. For when something is touched at a tiny point in the flesh, although that place is not the whole body—indeed, it scarcely seems to be in the body at all—the whole soul is nevertheless aware of it. What is sensed does not run throughout every part of the body; it is sensed only where it occurs. How, then, does what does not happen in the whole body reach the whole soul at once? Nor does the soul abandon the other parts in order to be whole there, for those parts in which nothing of the kind has happened live by its presence. If both events happened at once, neither would equally escape the whole soul. Thus Aurelius. But perhaps you will say that the soul is extended through the entire body in such a way that one part is in the foot, another in the lower leg, another in the thigh, breast, or neck, and the highest part in the brain, where the principal judgment is made. On this account, you may say, the soul's power seated in the brain judges the pain in the foot not because that same power is also present in the foot, but because, in a kind of succession, one part of the soul reports the foot's affection to another until it reaches the brain. You will surely not deny that these lower parts of the soul sense, since it is plainly evident that an affection is perceived in those members. For if the foot's affection must be reported to the brain, the report occurs either because the intervening members are affected one after another, or because, although they are not affected, they nevertheless sense the pain of the foot and convey it to the brain.