Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

2Let us bring this argument briefly to a close with a noble teaching of our Plotinus. Whatever is understood is either simple by its own nature, or at least is understood when analysis has made it simple. Since indivisible things are grasped only by what is indivisible, the power within us that grasps such things is itself indivisible. If the mind is said to be bodily, then, it will not grasp them by its breadth, but rather by something impartible. If it grasps only by this, it understands only by this. This impartible element alone will therefore be the mind in truth. Why are the remaining parts needed for it to be an intellect, when they are not needed for understanding once that one impartible element is sufficient? This one thing, then, is the mind. Retain it; set the rest aside, and you have attained the simple mind. Its simplicity is also evident from this: it receives a point without length, a line without breadth, a surface without depth, numbers without position, and beauty without any admixture of deformity. In considering these things, it distinguishes each separately; and the manner in which it considers them is the manner in which it receives them. A bodily form, however, does not receive these things separately in quite this way. If the fact that the soul comprehends simple and indivisible things clearly shows it to be simple and indivisible, the following shows this still more clearly: things that are simple or indivisible in themselves nevertheless become composite and divisible because they are joined to others. The soul separates them from their opposites and restores them to complete simplicity and indivisibility. It could not restore a simple and indivisible nature to them unless it were itself simple and indivisible. Finally, if it restores purity to things that have been tainted, it stands outside and above every taint.