Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

5Ariston, then, was not man in the absolute but this particular man constituted in this particular matter. He did not generate humanity itself in the absolute; he generated this man, Plato, in matter of this kind. With respect to the nature of being, everything beneath God participates in being itself. It does not possess being simply, but some determinate kind of being within a definite essence and species. It follows that no thing subject to God produces being itself; it merely gives a particular mode of being to a particular matter. Its work therefore always requires a prior foundation. Moreover, whether art or nature acts, it brings something from a given potentiality into actuality. A sculptor makes an actual statue from a stone prepared in such a way as already to contain the statue in potentiality; a human generates a human from seed in whose power the human is present. The matter from which art and nature make something is at times highly obedient and well suited to the work, and at other times less suited. Thus its potentiality stands now nearer, now farther from the actuality of the work to be made. The potentiality of air is not far from the effect of fire, whereas the potentiality of water is far from it; it is therefore easy to kindle fire from air and difficult to kindle it from water. Hence the greater the interval between the potentiality from which an agent begins and the actuality to which it must bring its work, the more powerful that agent must be.

6The distance between nothing and being is infinite: there is no proportion between nothing and being, and no greater distance can exist or even be conceived. Only a power that itself bears no proportion to other powers and has no limit can cross a distance lacking all proportion and limit. God alone is such a power, for every other power is surpassed by God’s. God alone, therefore, brings something from nothing into being.