Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

Philosophers of the common sort, persuaded by no argument but misled by corrupt habit, held that the soul was corporeal.

1To begin, I believe that the common philosophers who judged the soul to be corporeal and adopted one of the first four positions were persuaded by no argument. A long and most unhappy habit drove them to this opinion. The soul appears to have three principal offices: it acts within the body, it acts through the body, and it also operates through itself. It acts within the body by the power which the Peripatetics call vegetative and our Platonists call nature, when it generates the body, nourishes it, and makes it grow. It acts through the body by outward sense when it sees, hears, smells, tastes, and touches, and by inward sense when it turns over within itself the images of bodies perceived outside, like vestiges left by the senses. It acts through itself when it neither reaches bodies by the outward senses nor gathers bodily images by the inward sense, but, as the soul's bare and incorporeal power, investigates and discovers something incorporeal, which is neither a body nor an image of any body. We call this activity understanding. Thus you have natural activity, sensation, and understanding. The soul employs natural activity in the fetus as soon as it has entered the body; sensation a little later, as soon as the human being is born; and pure understanding scarcely even when the body has at last become adult. Indeed, a great part of humanity scarcely ever employs it, especially those who are still children in their thirtieth year.