Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

Tenth argument: because by its own nature it is related to God.

1If, nevertheless, there seems to be some condition by virtue of which the soul exists always, it is not a relation to bodies, whose aid the soul does not need, but a relation to the first cause from which it descends. Yet because a relation of this kind is fulfilled through the soul's own nature, nothing prevents the soul from existing always in its own right, absolutely, and without condition. We may establish this by the following argument. Since all things depend upon the first cause of things, each remains in its own being insofar as it is related to the first cause. Things look toward that cause insofar as they bear some likeness to it. The first cause is the purest act, utterly removed from every property of matter. Lower things are judged similar to this act not through their matter but rather through their form, which is itself a kind of act. It follows that all things look toward the first cause through their form. Accordingly, whatever is composed of matter and form, such as the elements and mixed bodies, looks toward the first cause neither through itself nor through its whole nature, but only through the part of itself called form. Frame the argument in this way: things exist in the same way that they are related to the first principle. They are related through another; therefore they exist through another. Things that exist through another are not stable, for if left to themselves they vanish into nothing. Thus things that owe whatever existence they have to another are nothing in themselves. Natural bodies are certainly of this kind.