Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

Twelfth argument. Things contrary in matter are not contrary in the mind.

1While the forms of contrary elements are in matter, they are contrary to one another, for they drive one another out and destroy one another. In the mind they are not contrary, since there they not only fail to drive one another out but even assist one another. Our mind possesses the forms of contrary elements at the same time when it considers the elements together. It also comprehends at once good and evil, useful and useless, beautiful and deformed, light and darkness, voice and silence, sweet and bitter, and all the rest; and from knowing one contrary it judges the other more clearly. The mind is therefore not corporeal, nor, properly speaking, corruptible. For what is corrupted is for the most part corrupted by its contrary. Yet what can be contrary to a mind that has such power over contraries that it removes their contrariety and reconciles enemies within its own peace? Nor, again, is the mind corruptible through separation from the things that preserve it. For if it reconciles alien and contrary things with things alien and contrary to them, much more will it draw itself near both to its own causes and to its preservers.