Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

5We must remember, however, that intellect knows not only universal nature but particular nature as well; otherwise it could not compare the two with one another. It also knows all the powers below itself and their acts, since it compares them all with itself. Almost everyone agrees, nevertheless, that intellect knows universal nature before particular nature. For it acts first in accordance with the nature of intelligible form. Because such a form is conceived through an act of abstraction, it is absolute, and therefore represents universal nature first. It acquires this power from the efficacy of the intellect in which and from which it exists, as though intellect itself were absolute. By contrast, the image in phantasy represents the particular alone. Both Platonists and Peripatetics commonly hold that intellect sees this particular only by a second and reflexive act. After it has suddenly and directly beheld the universal form, it turns back through a certain discursive movement, by way of act and form, toward the image whose prompting occasioned the form’s conception; only then does it behold the particular. The movement toward incorporeal and absolute realities is therefore supremely natural to the mind, since first, suddenly, and directly it carries itself toward them. Here it becomes evident that the power of understanding is wholly incorporeal. If, through the operations of nutrition and likewise through those of sensation—the former taking place in the body, the latter through and about the body—we have shown that the soul is not divided in the body, how much more must the same truth become evident through the operations of understanding? And this further truth as well: that the soul neither derives its origin from matter nor is mortal. For the soul performs the work of understanding by itself; in that work it entirely leaves matter behind and ascends to incorporeal and eternal principles. Let us therefore now see by what path we can discover what we seek from the operations and effects of intelligence.