Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

2Yet the soul has not altogether soared above matter. This is so both because phantasy does not recognize intentions of this kind as incorporeal and because Socrates’ phantasy contemplates precisely this man—namely Plato—in this place and position, at this time and hour of the day, together with this beauty, this goodness, and the rest under the same conditions. It paints Plato within itself under the very conditions in which he exists in matter. But while phantasy ranges over the singular conditions of this man, intellect conceives their common principles, and each faculty performs its own work at the same time. Intelligence reasons in this way: ‘What manner of man Plato is, nearly such is Antisthenes, and such too is Xenophon. They are alike in appearance, handsome and good, and in the same way friends and pupils. Hence in these three there is one common humanity by which they are equally men, one nature of beauty and also one of goodness, by which they are equally handsome and equally good.’ The very humanity common to these men is likewise common to countless others who are, have been, or will be, whenever and wherever they may be born; and the same is true of beauty and the rest. Take what I say of humanity as said also of the others. If, then, humanity communicates itself equally to individual persons, places, and times, it is bound to no person, no place, and no time. A nature of this kind appears to transcend all the particular conditions of bodies. In itself, therefore, it is in some manner incorporeal. And because it pours itself into individual bodies, so that it exists both in another and in many, there must stand above what exists in another that which remains in itself, and above the one that exists in many there must stand the one itself that subsists in itself. Consequently, above all bodies there exists a certain principle and Idea of humanity itself, through some participation in or likeness to which all human beings become human.