Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

Sixteenth argument. A bodily form does not possess infinite power; the mind does.

1It is agreed among the natural philosophers that a corporeal form, especially an elemental one, is so bounded that it can possess no infinite and unwearied power. Mind, however, ranges without limit and is never fatigued. To begin with, it is as though without limit within itself, for it understands itself. Thus its act of understanding, proceeding from the mind’s own substance, returns into that same substance. Revolution is an infinite motion. For it does not set out toward any external end to be acquired, at which it might rest, but circles its own substance in desire for itself; and its desire for itself is never extinguished. A substance, therefore, which through desire for itself has once begun to meet itself from every side and, by circling itself, to behold itself on every side, will, under the perpetual impulse of that same desire, perpetually embrace itself in the same way and at will. The motion of intellect, then, because it is circular and revolves upon itself, is assuredly everlasting insofar as it is intellectual. It also has no end, as we have said, because intelligence is repeated infinitely. Whoever understands himself or any other thing can understand his own act of intelligence just as he understands the thing itself, and then a further act and another without end: he both knows the thing and notices that he knows it. Again, he is not unaware that he notices this, and so onward without limit. This course of intelligence is accompanied by the rational appetite they call will. The will desires itself or any other thing, wills itself to will, and in turn wills that it wills, and so onward in the same manner. Furthermore, mind divides bodies into many parts and the parts into particles. It raises number upon number without end. It discovers innumerable kinds of figures, their mutual proportions, and comparisons of numbers; it extends a line in every direction above the heavens and beyond all limit. It carries time backward into a past without beginning and forward into a future without end. Nor does it merely conceive another time older and more protracted than every span of time; beyond every place it also always conceives another place more spacious. It fashions innumerable degrees within each quality. Add that the mind, unlike sensation, is not confined to any one class of things: not to colors alone, as sight is, nor to sounds alone, as hearing is, but it ranges through all things. Through all things, I say—not only those that are, but those that have been or will be; and not these alone, but also things that neither exist nor ever have existed or will exist. For it devises many things that might perhaps exist but never will, and itself invents many things that perhaps could never exist.