Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

Fourteenth argument. A body's activity tends toward a composite thing; the mind's activity, toward simple things.

1The operation of every thing always follows the thing’s own being: operation belongs to that which possesses being; the manner of operating is the same as the manner of being; and the work in which an operation terminates is like the agent. In things composed of matter and corporeal form, being belongs properly neither to the matter nor to the form, but to the whole composite made from the conjunction of both. Operation therefore belongs properly to the composite itself; hence it operates in a composite manner and produces a composite work. We see this in the elements, plants, and animals, which generate composite works just as they themselves are composite. If intellect were a body composed of matter and form, then, since its operation is intelligence, that intelligence would always terminate in something composite, and it would never understand anything except composite things. But our mind so far surpasses natural composition that it resolves composite bodies into matter and form and thinks of each separately. Each, however, is simple in itself. Its excellence is seen most of all in this: things that in matter are in a certain way false, it comprehends as true, as with geometrical figures and their principles. Things impure in matter it distinguishes as pure. Qualities that in matter are mixed with one another and tainted by their contraries, it judges according to their proper principles. Things that are many in themselves it beholds as one, as when it sees infinitely many human beings under one species. Things movable in themselves it contemplates as stable, when it gathers together the parts of time, which flow in themselves, and joins past and future to the present. Things distant in themselves it very often beholds as united, when it sees the whole world in a point. Neither intervals of time nor expanses of place restrain the mind’s gaze. Things dead, so to speak, it beholds as living: stones devoid of life the mind holds alive within itself when it compares them to the first life from which they were made. Things corruptible it beholds as perpetual, when by its gaze it removes individual bodies subject to place and time from places and times. From all this we conclude that intellect is not anything corporeal, since it operates in a manner far different from bodies; nor is it impure, tainted, dispersed, mutable, or corruptible, since by a power of its own it frees even things that possess these conditions from affections of this kind.