Mental hands, conception, and creative understanding

Use in the book

Ficino distinguishes receiving a form from conceiving its account or definition. This second activity is needed to complete understanding. A material recipient is constrained by its own kind, whereas mind abstracts, reasons and returns upon itself by producing forms for itself. Such production need not mean creating an external substance from nothing.

He turns the current debate into an example. To argue that soul is incorporeal, the disputants must already be able to conceive an incorporeal mode of being and fashion an account of it. They handle that account with mental hands. Describing something as existing without length, breadth, depth, bodily quality or figure demonstrates intellectual access to a nonbodily object; it does not by itself prove that every such described object exists outside thought.

The childbirth image reinforces the causal likeness argument. Mind produces an offspring resembling its own intellectual nature, not an object elevated beyond the substance of its parent. Ficino then infers that mind surpasses the restrictions of bodies. The last formulation is cautious in logical form: nothing prevents such mind from being perpetual. Other passages carry stronger positive demonstrations.

The same vocabulary later includes artistic and hypothetical construction. Mind paints within itself, speaks into the air or makes marks on a wall. Its inward products have an existence as conceived representations even when what they represent never comes to be.

Places to read

1. VIII.10.1, VIII.10.2Reception becomes conception; active mental hands and offspring illustrate nonbodily intellectual operation.
2. VIII.16.1, VIII.16.2Possible, impossible and inwardly painted objects broaden the account of mental making.

Translation in this edition

In et capit sola summa cum voluptate at VIII.10.2, sola qualifies mind as subject: mind alone grasps these objects in the stated way. It does not mean that mind grasps only incorporeals. The apparatus makes this ambiguity explicit.

accipere / concipere

accipere / concipere. Printed forms: accipiat; accipiet; concipiat; concipiet.

Receiving a presented form and conceiving an account from it. Ficino requires both stages for completed understanding and uses their distinction against a body fixed to one natural species. References: VIII.10.1. See Mental hands, conception, and creative understanding.

cogitare

cogitare. Printed forms: cogitare; cogitaret; cogitat; cogitationum; cogitet.

To think of something, including an object no longer present. A mere mirror-like surface reception cannot account for thinking of absent bodies, because it does not retain their images. References: VII.1.3. See Memory, rigidity and fluidity.

Thinking or entertaining a content, which can be true, hypothetical or invented. Ficino distinguishes common intellectual accounts from singular images and allows thoughts of possible or impossible objects without asserting their external existence. References: VIII.1.1, VIII.1.4, VIII.3.6, VIII.4.11, VIII.8.1, VIII.14.1, VIII.16.1. See Mental hands, conception, and creative understanding.

concipere / excogitare

concipere / excogitare. Printed forms: concepit; concepta; conceptas; conciperet; concipiatur; concipit; excogitaret; excogitat; excogitata.

Conceiving or bringing an intelligible content into thought. Immediate common-nature apprehension, a proposition in a connected science and a fabricated possible object are distinct products of this activity. References: VIII.1.1, VIII.1.2, VIII.1.4, VIII.1.5, VIII.3.7, VIII.8.1, VIII.10.1, VIII.16.1. See Mental hands, conception, and creative understanding.

facere / fieri (further forms)

facere / fieri (further forms). Printed forms: facta; facti; fiat; fieret; fieri; fiet; Fiet; fiunt; Fiunt.

Making or becoming, including resultative and passive forms rather than a single doctrine of production. Natural generation, conceptual formation and intellectual perfection differ; no occurrence alone authorizes efficient self-creation of mind. References: VIII.1.2, VIII.1.3, VIII.1.5, VIII.2.1, VIII.2.4, VIII.2.7, VIII.3.1, VIII.4.1, VIII.4.2, VIII.4.3, VIII.4.5, VIII.4.6, VIII.4.9, VIII.5.2, VIII.6.1, VIII.10.1, VIII.13.1, VIII.13.2, VIII.14.1, VIII.15.1, VIII.15.2, VIII.16.1, VIII.16.4. See Mental hands, conception, and creative understanding.

manus mentis

manus mentis. Printed forms: manibus; mentis nostrae.

The mind's hands, a metaphor for active conceptual fashioning and handling. The present proof is itself an example: it articulates an incorporeal object of thought rather than manipulating a bodily shape. References: VIII.10.2. See Mental hands, conception, and creative understanding.

pingere in se / aere / pariete

pingere in se / aere / pariete. Printed forms: aere; linguam; manum; pariete; pingit.

Painting inwardly, speaking in air and making an image on a wall. Ficino grants inward representations a reality as products, comparable to outward signs; this does not make their depicted objects actual. References: VIII.16.2. See Mental hands, conception, and creative understanding.

proles / parturire

proles / parturire. Printed forms: parit; parturiet; procreabit; prolem.

Offspring, birth and begetting as causal-likeness images. Natural agents generate within their kind; intellectual conception likewise produces content suited to mind's nonbodily nature. References: VIII.10.1, VIII.10.2. See Mental hands, conception, and creative understanding.

prospicere / effingere / fingere

prospicere / effingere / fingere. Printed forms: effingendam; effingeremus; fingimus; finximus; prospeximus.

Foreseeing a concept to be made and then fashioning it. The argument presupposes access to some incorporeal mode before it attempts to show that soul belongs there; it does not create an external soul from nothing. References: VIII.10.2. See Mental hands, conception, and creative understanding.

sola (subject)

sola (subject). Printed forms: sola.

Alone, feminine singular, qualifying mind as the subject that grasps incorporeals in the stated way. In et capit sola summa cum voluptate it does not restrict the objects to incorporeals alone; the chapter also gives mind knowledge of bodies. References: VIII.10.2. See Mental hands, conception, and creative understanding.