Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

4Nor should we be troubled by the many living creatures whose severed bodies leave two fragments that both move and sense, as though the soul had been as extended as the body and, when the body is cut into bodies, the soul too appeared to be cut into souls. The soul is not first divided; rather, it perishes as soon as the very structure of the body to which it had been assigned is dissolved. New souls, however, arise at once from the life of the world in those fragments capable of receiving a soul, for the nature of the fragments is the same as the nature of the former whole. Because souls of this kind are so lowly that they possess very few powers and activities, and therefore need very few instruments, even a body not furnished with diverse organs is enough for them. Such a body is not enough for more perfect souls, which for this reason do not live in each separate member. If a piece of wood is cut at a point, that point, although indivisible, nevertheless perishes, and two terminal points seem to be born anew in the two fragments. If you break a mirror in which the image of your face appeared, the original image is not itself cut in two; it vanishes, and in the two mirrors two images of you are created anew in place of the one. Consider also the name Lucifer, in which the spoken sound occupies the place of body and the meaning the place of soul. If you divide it like a living creature into two members, luci and fer, the original meaning by which Venus was designated first ceases. It is not divided, for the meaning of a name is indivisible, as we shall show elsewhere. Yet two meanings now exist in the two parts, and through them, as through souls, utterances of this kind survive: luci through the meaning of light, and fer through a meaning associated with bearing. What, then, prevents creeping animals, according to the Platonists, from possessing an indivisible soul even though their divided members remain alive?