Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

Sixth argument: because it is indivisible.

1Moreover, since the soul is indivisible, it does not receive divisible and corporeal qualities. For what is divisible does not touch what is indivisible. Suppose it is said that the indivisible is touched by something divisible. We shall ask whether this divisible thing touches the indivisible with some point of itself or with some divisible part. If you grant the first, then only the point touches it; thus it is not the divisible thing, but something indivisible, that touches the indivisible. But if you say that it touches with some divisible part, we reason as follows. If this divisible thing touches what you call indivisible by a divisible part of itself, then the latter must likewise be touched in a divisible part of itself. For how does the one touch the other unless the other is touched? And how does the one touch it with several of its own parts unless the other too is touched in several parts of itself? Insofar as the one touches, the other is touched. Consequently, what you had declared indivisible is first compelled to become divisible when you allow it to be touched by something divisible. The indivisible essence of the soul, therefore, is never touched by any divisible quality. It is touched, I say, neither along a straight line nor by a reflected one: not along a straight line, because the soul does not admit a quality that encounters it head-on; not by reflection, because, being exempt from body, it is not swept away by the force and fury of qualities raging in the body. Thus no such quality corrupts it. Might it perhaps be corrupted by some indivisible quality, which it readily receives? By no means. The reception of indivisible qualities perfects what receives them; it does not corrupt it. This is evident from the indivisible images of things received by water and mirrors, and by the soul through both sense and reason. Properly speaking, one thing acts upon another in no other way than by presenting it with its own form, for all things are drawn to act in order to propagate their nature. Yet no corporeal thing either can or strives to generate a corporeal form of itself within the soul's essence, which is so removed from matter that corporeal forms have no entrance into it. But do God or an angel introduce a new form into the soul by which the soul might be disturbed? Certainly not. If they create a form that subsists in itself, they create it apart from the soul; the soul is therefore not disturbed by its creation. If, however, they pour some power into the soul, such a power is beneficent, since it comes from the best causes, which preserve the soul itself. Through this power, therefore, the soul does not perish but is preserved.