Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

Fourteenth argument: because it is life in itself.

1The soul is an essence, and it is also life. By the preceding arguments we showed it to be immortal because it is an essence existing in its own right; now we show the same immortality because it is a life living in its own right. The soul is life by its very essence, because everything in it is life. If anything in it were not life, that thing would not be a part of the soul, and the whole would be called an animated thing rather than a soul. Let us therefore acknowledge that the soul’s entire essence is life. If it is wholly life, it must in its formal nature be called life in its own right. Whatever lives through another and is not itself alive in its own right is composed of two parts: a proper nature not alive in itself, and life received from elsewhere. Conclude, then: if a thing that lives through another is not wholly life, a thing that is wholly life must live through itself. The soul, being wholly life, lives through itself—especially since it moves itself. If so, it is life in its own right. The soul’s essence is therefore life. A sign of this is that, wherever it arrives, it bestows life, as though it were in itself the very thing it gives to another. When it departs, the body ceases to live; while it is present to the body, it never for one instant ceases to perform the works of life by giving the body life. Vivification is therefore the soul’s perpetual activity. A perpetual activity is a thing’s proper activity; the soul’s proper activity is thus to give life. And giving life belongs properly to life itself, just as heating belongs to heat. The soul’s essence, therefore, is life.

2Consider another indication. As soon as a body is prepared, the soul gives it life. It must do so either by its being, by desire, or by cognition and deliberation. If the soul vivified the body through cognition and deliberation, everyone would know what the soul generates and nourishes in the organs at every moment and how its internal work is arranged; unless they knew these things, those processes would not occur. Does the soul act by desire? Not that either. Otherwise the mind would remain in the body as long as it wished, and anyone who hated association with the body would leave it at once. It remains that the soul vivifies the body by its very being—that is, by its natural power. If it gives life by its very being, then through its essence it is either life or a living thing, just as whatever heats by its very being is through its essence or power either heat or something hot. Conclude that the soul’s essence is a kind of life.