Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

Ninth argument. Minds embrace one another; bodies do no such thing.

1Two bodily things cannot contain one another in a mutual embrace. Whatever contains another thing by quantity is larger than what it contains, and one body cannot be at once both larger and narrower than one and the same other body. Thus the sphere of Saturn encircles and contains the sphere of Jupiter, not the reverse. But one mind contains another and is equally contained by it. My mind considers yours, and yours considers mine. By considering one another, then, our minds receive one another in turn; by receiving they understand, and in understanding they embrace. What is more, one mind embraces all minds when it considers the nature of them all. Therefore, if every mind beholds any mind whatever—as indeed it can if it directs its attention—every mind is contained within any mind. No body, however, can be contained within any body whatever. If every species of things is immortal, it follows that an individual substance which makes itself equal to its own species is immortal. Any mind can look into any others when occasion permits, and within individual minds it beholds the species common to them all. There, through the reflex act which is cognition, it makes itself equal to its own species; therefore, through the direct act which is life, it had already made itself equal to that species. If this is so, it follows either that every mind always has existed and will exist, just as the species of minds itself does, or at least that it will exist forever hereafter as that species does.