Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

4Indeed, if being and being hot were altogether the same, then when you frame the premise, ‘Because fire is hot in its own right, it is always hot,’ you would immediately add, ‘Being hot and being are the same; therefore it exists, and exists always.’ But you cannot draw that conclusion, because being and being hot are not the same. Otherwise everything that exists would be hot, and whatever ceased to be hot would cease to exist, which does not happen. Fire is therefore always hot while it exists, because in a certain sense it first exists and afterward is hot. Since being comes before being hot and is other than it, heat seems to inhere in the essence of fire through some intermediary: first the essence of fire is posited, second its being, and in the third place its being hot. Indeed, the essence of fire obtains being through adhering to matter. In a certain sense it lies hidden in the womb of matter before it is brought forth into the light; and just as it lay hidden before it existed, so afterward it continues to adhere, lest it cease to exist. It also obtains being hot through possessing being. Hence it ceases to be hot when it ceases to be, and ceases to be when it ceases to inhere. But because the soul's essence is a separate form, it obtains being through itself. In the soul, being itself is the first and proper act of essence. There is no bond by which being is connected with essence and whose loosening could bring dissolution. Although both being hot and being belong to the essence of fire under some condition, being belongs to the soul's essence under no condition at all, but absolutely. Thus, although fire exists under a determinate condition and is always hot, the soul exists always without qualification.