Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

8Reason judges that something incorporeal can be found, and it is always engaged with some such reality. It is therefore true by the judgment of reason that something incorporeal exists, just as it is true by the judgment of the senses that many corporeal things exist in the world. Yet the senses err when they affirm that nothing exists except body. Reason would likewise err if it asserted that nothing corporeal exists among things. But reason is so far from falsehood that it even corrects the deceptions of sense. The powers of sensation are so fallible that they are not only corrected by reason, but condemned by one another. If you entrust yourself to sight alone, you will say that nothing exists in the world except what is visible in the light, and that voices, odors, and all the other things that cannot be seen do not exist at all. If you trust only your ears, you will deny that colors exist. If you trust smell, you will suppose that nothing exists in the world but odors. The same must be understood of the other senses. Each sense denies that anything exists beyond its own proper object; yet by one sense we condemn another and rightly discover that something exists beyond what belongs to any single sense. In the same way all the senses conspire together to deny that anything can exist in nature which is not body. Reason nevertheless refutes them all and prophesies that something incorporeal also exists. Its prophecy is true—far truer than the senses, which condemn one another and are themselves refuted by reason.