Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

2Sum up the matter briefly. In both flesh and spirit there occurs a destructive loosening or contraction that corrupts their substance; let us call this a harmful injury. Does an injury of this kind also pass into the soul? By no means. Such an injury destroys substance; it therefore destroys the power belonging to that substance, and thereafter the power's operation. Consequently, in even the slightest injury to flesh or spirit, if the injury passed into the soul, the soul's substance present to them would likewise be injured; its power would be injured still more, and its operation as well. Sensation and imagination are powers of the soul; sensing and judging through sensation are the activities of those powers. If, then, the cut passed into the soul's substance, we should neither sense it nor judge what kind of injury it is, where it comes from, and how aid should be given. Either it would remain wholly hidden from the soul, or at most something slight would be perceived, and the soul would judge it falsely. Moreover, since the soul is whole everywhere, if the soul itself suffers where one part of the body is cut, the whole soul suffers. But the same whole soul that is there also extends through the entire body; it therefore suffers throughout the entire body. If it suffers everywhere, it cannot perceive and report that the affection is present in one part of the living creature more than in another. Moreover, the affection is one thing and the judgment of it another, and an affection is always judged by something else. If an affection inheres in the judgment itself, a further judgment is needed to judge that affected judgment. If this second judgment too is affected, yet another is again required.