Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

4No argument of this kind, however, is necessary for the intellect to attain the common principles of things. Just as phantasy by its own nature judges things singly, so intellect by its natural power acts immediately and without any discursive reasoning. As soon as that singular image of Plato is painted in phantasy, it suddenly—I say—sets aside this determinate man and conceives both the human nature common to all and its Idea. Once that beauty and goodness have been depicted, intellect immediately conceives the universal nature and principle of beauty and goodness, placed in no determinate matter, position, or time, but either present in all matter or, released from matter, subsisting simply in itself. Thus sensation is occupied with bodies, imagination with images of bodies, phantasy with the particular intentions of those images, and intellect with the common natures of those particular intentions and with wholly incorporeal principles.