Mind’s transformation of material conditions · Lexicon

From the book

Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

Marsilio Ficino · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordFicino's series contrasts things under material conditions with their intellectual apprehension: composite/simple, impure/pure, many/one, changing/stable, distant/united, dead/living and corruptible/perpetual.
In the Platonic TheologyVIII.14 gathers many earlier arguments into a catalogue.
In this editionQuodammodo qualifies the claim that material figures are false; ut ita loquar qualifies “dead.”
A place to readThe complete series moves from analysis through purity, unity and stability to intellectual life and perpetuity.

Meaning

Ficino's series contrasts things under material conditions with their intellectual apprehension: composite/simple, impure/pure, many/one, changing/stable, distant/united, dead/living and corruptible/perpetual. The change is first in the mode of understanding, not a physical alteration of the external object.

Use in the book

VIII.14 gathers many earlier arguments into a catalogue. Mind resolves composite bodies into matter and form and considers each separately. It apprehends exact figures where material presentations lack exactness, isolates qualities from contrary admixtures and gathers many individuals under one species. It brings the changing parts of time together, relating past and future to present; and it can survey distant places together, as if beholding the world in a point.

The most striking claims concern life and perpetuity. Mind holds apparently lifeless stones “living” within itself by comparing them to the first life from which they were produced. It considers corruptible individuals apart from their locations and times. These are exercises of intellectual reference to principles and universal accounts, not claims that a thought revives a dead organism or preserves a specific stone indefinitely in the external world.

Ficino draws a conclusion about the knower: a power that liberates objects from these restrictions in understanding cannot itself simply possess all the restrictions of a bodily composite. The inference from operation to substance is doing the work. A reader can therefore distinguish the described cognitive achievement from the further metaphysical conclusion Ficino wants it to warrant.

Places to read

VIII.14.1The complete series moves from analysis through purity, unity and stability to intellectual life and perpetuity.

Translation in this edition

Quodammodo qualifies the claim that material figures are false; ut ita loquar qualifies “dead.” The English preserves both. Prima vita names the life to which stones are referred as effects; the supplied argument does not identify the stone's own material condition with that source.

colligere

colligere. Printed forms: collegerat; collegit; colligit.

Gathering distinct contributions into a single cognitive or explanatory unity. Imagination combines the five senses' contributions; later intellect gathers individuals under a species and times in a common regard. References: VIII.1.1, VIII.14.1, VIII.16.2. See Mind’s transformation of material conditions.

compositum

compositum. Printed forms: composita; compositi; compositis; compositum.

A whole constituted from matter and corporeal form. Its being and operation belong properly to the composite, while intellect can consider its constituents separately and so exceed that mode of operation. References: VIII.14.1. See Mind’s transformation of material conditions.

eximere / liberare

eximere / liberare. Printed forms: eximit; liberet.

Removing from restrictions or freeing in the mode of understanding. Mind abstracts individuals from place and time and other material affections; the external body is not thereby rendered physically immortal. References: VIII.14.1. See Mind’s transformation of material conditions.

lapides / prima vita

lapides / prima vita. Printed forms: lapides; primam; vitam; vivos.

Lifeless stones and their reference to the first life as their source. Mind possesses stones as living in the sense of referring their intelligible account to that cause, not by physically animating the stone. References: VIII.14.1. See Mind’s transformation of material conditions.

orbis in puncto

orbis in puncto. Printed forms: intervalla; orbem; puncto; spatia.

The world seen in a point, an image of nonextended intellectual survey. Mind can consider spatially distant objects together without its gaze being confined to their bodily distances. References: VIII.14.1. See Mind’s transformation of material conditions.

praeteritum / futurum / praesens

praeteritum / futurum / praesens. Printed forms: futurum; praesenti; praeteritum; temporis.

Past, future and present as related objects of a single intellectual regard. Mind gathers flowing temporal parts in thought; this does not make past events physically simultaneous with present ones. References: VIII.14.1. See Mind’s transformation of material conditions.

purus / unus / stabilis (intellectual consideration)

purus / unus / stabilis (intellectual consideration). Printed forms: pura; stabilia; unum.

Pure, one and stable as ways in which intellect considers objects otherwise impure, many or moving. Mind distinguishes mixed qualities under their proper accounts, understands many humans under one species, and gathers past and future with the present. These contrasts concern intellectual apprehension; they do not make material things physically pure, numerically one or motionless. References: VIII.14.1. See Mind’s transformation of material conditions.