Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

Eighth argument: because it has a being of its own and never departs from its form.

1Generation and corruption are so opposed to one another that they tend toward contradictories: generation is a kind of path toward being, corruption a path toward non-being. Each thing tends toward being by receiving some determinate form, and toward non-being by being compelled to lose its form. In the arts, no work is this or that because of its matter, but because of its form. A bronze horse or man is not called such because its matter is bronze, since bronze is equally prepared to receive the shapes of every animal, but because a likeness in the form of a horse or man has proceeded from the artist. This portion of bronze is called a horse, that one a man. The same holds in nature. Matter is not that by which Plato is a man or a fig tree is a tree. The same first matter of the world is common to men, beasts, and trees. That matter existed through many ages before Plato and continues through many after him, whereas Plato does not. Plato therefore belongs to the human species not because of matter, but because of a certain bodily constitution and a soul, both of which are called forms. We should judge other things in the same way and conclude in sum that each thing receives from form its own proper being, nature, and species, by which it differs from others.