Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

Tenth argument. The mind acts through all bodies and beyond them.

1Since form is the principle of operation, each thing acts according to its own kind; hence all things, so far as they can, generate offspring like themselves in species. Nothing acts beyond its own kind. Nor do these lower things act beyond their species—a dog never generates a sheep—and much less do they produce anything above their species. For how could a dog beget a human being? It follows that a body cannot extend its power of action beyond its proper kind, and still less above its own nature. It will therefore never reach, attain, or produce every kind of body, still less anything incorporeal. If the intellect were a body, it would be some definite body belonging to a species of bodies. Two absurdities would follow. First, it would neither receive nor conceive the forms of many bodies. It would not receive the forms of bodies like itself, because it would already possess them. How could fire receive the form of another fire? Nor could it conceive or bring forth the forms of unlike bodies, for every nature brings forth what is like itself. Yet in order to understand, the intellect must first receive the form of the thing to be understood, then from that form conceive the thing’s definition or account. Only then is the act of understanding complete. If the intellect were a body, it would therefore know very few bodies, since it would receive the form of no body like itself, conceive the form of no body unlike itself, and could not understand unless it both received and conceived. Even if it were somehow possible for a bodily intellect to receive or conceive a bodily form, it would certainly do so only in accordance with its own nature. If it received a form from elsewhere, it would draw that form into its own nature; if it conceived one from itself, it would bring it forth according to its own nature. Through any form received or conceived by it, therefore, it would always apprehend some definite bodily species suited and conformable to itself, and would never consider the diversity of bodily kinds. Yet we see that the mind not only observes whatever bodies exist, but freely fashions infinitely many other and varied bodies. A second absurdity would follow if the intellect were a body: it would not transcend the order of bodies, since bodies scarcely ever act beyond their own species and certainly never above their own kind. The mind would therefore never know incorporeal things. Which do you judge the more excellent, substance or action? Substance, surely, since it is the cause of the action itself. We must therefore beware of ever admitting that an activity is more sublime than its substance.