Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

3This form has no rank in nature proper to itself, insofar as it penetrates every rank above and below. It has no proper position, insofar as it comes to rest nowhere; and no fixed and bounded power, so to speak, insofar as it operates equally upon all things. This above all else also seems to me to show the mind’s unbounded power, as I may call it: mind discovers that infinity itself exists and defines what it is and of what kind. Since knowledge is perfected through a certain equality between mind and things, the mind is in some manner made equal to the infinity it knows. But what is equal to infinity must itself be infinite. And if time, which measures motion by a certain succession, must be infinite provided the motion is infinite, how much more must mind be infinite, since by a stable conception it measures not only motion and time but infinity itself? For the measure must bear a proportion to that which it measures, whereas there is no proportion between the finite and the infinite. The same is also shown clearly by the fact that in its consideration the mind passes from nonbeing into being and conversely. Being and nonbeing differ from one another by an immeasurable interval, and the power that traverses an immeasurable space must itself be immeasurable. Who can deny that the mind traverses this interval, when by the surest arguments we comprehend creation, which passes from nonbeing into being, and destruction, which passes in the opposite direction; when we describe the nature of both extremes; and when by intellect we attain the power of being in common, which communicates itself through innumerable modes of being to things born from its procession? Finally, to speak in sum, this may testify that the mind possesses a power in some manner infinite: hunger, thirst, and sleep of the body are quickly satisfied by some small thing, but the mind’s ardor is never extinguished, whether it looks to human or divine things. If to human things, what accumulation of riches or what extent of empire puts an end to it? If to divine things, no knowledge of created and finite beings fills it. Rightly, then, it never rests unless it receives the infinite God, who fills its infinite capacity flowing from him.