Presence

Use in the book

The participle τὸ παρόν means what is present. At 217c–e2 a colour can be present on something without the thing itself possessing that colour in the stronger sense intended: whitening paste makes fair hair look white, whereas old age makes it white.

The proposed distinction concerns how the quality is present. It is used to explain how badness can be present without yet making the subject bad. The passage should not be made into a general denial that paint has a colour, or into an independently established theory of participation in Forms.

Places to read

1. 217eοἷον τὸ παρόν — such as what is present.
2. 217c–e2

Use in the book

At 217b the intermediate becomes a friend of the good because of the presence of bad. The noun does not by itself mean complete assimilation: the following illustration distinguishes having a colour present from actually becoming like that colour (217c–e2).

White lead on fair hair produces an appearance of whiteness; age produces hair that is white in the intended sense. Correspondingly, ignorance can be present without the person having become so unknowing as to lack awareness of it. At 218b–c this explanation seems to solve the problem, but the inquiry immediately resumes. “Presence” is therefore the vocabulary of a tested model, not proof of a finished metaphysical theory.

Places to read

1. 217bδιὰ κακοῦ παρουσίαν — because of the presence of badness.
2. 217b–218c23

Use in the book

The Hermetic description says that desire and spirit arrive when the divine part enters a mortal body, and through their presence a human soul results. Their presence therefore helps characterize human psychic constitution. It should not be replaced by a claim that the divine part changes into those other powers.

Places to read

1. I.49.5.4The presence of desire and spirit accompanies the formation of human soul.
2. I.36.2.13The absence of warm exhalation is invoked to explain cold.

Translation in this edition

“Presence” preserves the relation without specifying a mechanism that the passage does not supply.

Absence as explanation

Apousia is absence. In I.36.2.13 the absence of warm exhalation explains the cold said to precede early-morning earthquakes. The word marks the lack of a particular physical factor; it does not name an independently active substance. Reading presence and absence together clarifies the report’s causal contrast.

Use in the book

The soul’s sight is its presence. I.55 uses this claim to bring Eden, the flood, the Exodus, and the Cross into a life no longer confined to its present age. To understand and love a historical object is a real mode of being with it, although not a relocation of the body.

The same distinction answers loneliness in III.23. Distant cities, friends, and kingdoms sustain the person through their intelligible reality and the providence that connects them. Conversely, the mere external presence of riches cannot make an ungrateful person happy. Presence adequate to felicity requires that what exists become inwardly apprehended, esteemed, and loved.

Places to read

1. I.55The understanding’s sight makes distant ages spiritually present.
2. III.23Goods absent to the eye remain present as assurance and consolation.
3. I.32Riches can be outwardly present yet unavailable to the person who despises them.

In this edition

Real presence of understanding does not claim bodily time travel. The text explicitly differentiates the mode by which the soul is with its objects.

Use in the book

Soul is wholly present to every part of its living body without acquiring bodily extension. Ficino rejects both contact with only one point, which would leave the remainder without life, and distribution like whiteness in flesh, which would divide soul with its subject and reduce it to quality. Soul touches through indivisible power, remaining entire in its communication to many bodily parts.

The geometrical comparisons sharpen the distinction. An endpoint fixed to one line is indivisible but still tied to a particular position. A center stands in relation to all radii and the circumference. Soul is likened to a living point freed from quantitative position, not identified with a mathematical point lodged in the body. An utterance and its meaning heard throughout a house provide another explicitly qualified likeness. The explanatory feature is freedom from spatial extension, not extreme smallness: a tiny spatial object would still occupy its own position.

Book IV repeatedly argues that a remote celestial influence alone cannot account for substantial living production. A proximate living source must be present, and soul's indivisibility permits its whole presence throughout a sphere. Yet presence and indwelling are not everywhere identical formulations. The closing quotation attributed to Plato preserves a disjunction: soul must either be present to each celestial body or dwell within it, adsit aut insit. According to the supplied apparatus, later witnesses omit the first alternative, while this edition retains the broader base wording. The distinction matters when moving from an argument that celestial motion requires soul to an assertion about the precise mode of union.

That disjunction follows Ficino's express reservation submitting the account of sphere-souls to Christian theological examination. It should not be suppressed in favor of an unqualified doctrine of immanence. Nor does a soul's presence make God the world's animating form; Ficino separately rejects that identification.

Further passage references. III.2.9–212345678910111213; IV.1.5; IV.1.22–IV.1.28234567; IV.1.67; IV.1.96; apparatus.

Places to read

1. III.2.13Whole utterance and meaning in a house illustrate presence unlike quantitative extension
2. III.2.19Soul touches no exclusive point but is related to the whole as center to circle
3. IV.1.96Presence or indwelling remains a disjunction in the qualified closing quotation

Translation in this edition

At IV.1.96 adsit aut insit is rendered “either present to or dwelling within.” The supplied apparatus reports that later witnesses omit the first alternative; this edition retains both. That report is not a new witness collation here. The disjunction also follows Ficino’s explicit theological reservation.

adesse / inesse

adesse / inesse. Printed forms: adsit; insit.

To be present to; to dwell within. The final quotation leaves these alternatives for soul's relation to cosmic bodies instead of certifying only indwelling animation. References: IV.1.96. See Indwelling and presence.

collocare

collocare. Printed forms: collocare; collocari.

To place in or locate within a bearer. God is not placed inside things as a spatial occupant; divine intelligence is not located in an essence distinct from it. References: II.6.13, II.9.7. See Indwelling and presence.

distrahere / adstare

distrahere / adstare. Printed forms: adstat; adstet; distrahiturve.

Draw apart / stand present. Soul is said to stand present whole to spatially distant bodily parts without being stretched into corresponding pieces. References: III.2.12, III.2.19. See Indwelling and presence.

haerere

haerere. Printed forms: haerere; haeret.

Cling or adhere. Sunlight’s maintained attachment illustrates soul’s continuing relation to divine things while enlivening mortal things. References: III.2.8. See Indwelling and presence.

inesse / adesse / insitus

inesse / adesse / insitus. Printed forms: adesse; inesse; inest; insita.

To be within, be present, or be implanted. Presence may concern life in an element, desire within heaven, or productive seeds in a soul; these objects specify the kind of indwelling. References: IV.1.1, IV.1.16, IV.1.34, IV.1.61. See Indwelling and presence.

inesse / insitus

inesse / insitus. Printed forms: inerit; insint; insitam; insunt.

To be in or inhere; implanted as a natural power. Being in a subject, co-presence without confusion, and essential power implanted in being require different contextual readings. References: II.1.3, II.4.5, II.6.14, II.8.2. See Indwelling and presence.

inesse / praeesse

inesse / praeesse. Printed forms: inesse; praeesse.

To be present in and to preside over. The incorporeal substance is argued both to penetrate bodies and to govern their qualities; presence and causal superiority are combined. References: I.3.10. See Indwelling and presence.

insitus

insitus. Printed forms: insita; insitum.

Implanted or present within. Bodily powers are said to act from a quality present within them; unity present in parts is later argued not to be divided into portions. References: I.2.8, I.3.30. See Indwelling and presence.

intrinsecus / extrinsecus

intrinsecus / extrinsecus. Printed forms: extrinseca; extrinsecum; extrinsecus; intrinseca; intrinsecos; intrinsecum; intrinsecus.

Inward and outward. Ficino distinguishes life as inward operation from temporal outward work; the shared temporal dispersion does not erase the distinction. References: I.5.2. See Act and operation.

Inward or outward in relation to a thing’s own perfection and spread. In the reported account, enduring always is inward and superior to the outward achievement of presence everywhere. References: II.6.19, II.6.20. See Perfection.

From outside / from within. God’s government acts inwardly in things he made, unlike an artisan working upon alien matter from outside. References: II.13.12. See Indwelling and presence.

migrare / transire

migrare / transire. Printed forms: migrant; migrat; transeunt; transire; transit.

To pass or move between states, or to traverse a sequence. Bodies pass between being-states; an endless chain cannot be traversed before action; immanent operation does not pass into external matter. References: II.7.7, II.8.3, II.9.5. See Act and operation.

Migrate or pass into. Soul passes into particular things without abandoning the others; the verbs describe communicative range rather than spatial relocation alone. References: III.2.23. See Indwelling and presence.

penetralia

penetralia. Printed forms: penetralibus.

Innermost recesses. The spatial image expresses intimate divine presence in the things governed, rather than intervention solely from outside. References: II.13.12. See Indwelling and presence.

prope / disto

prope / disto. Printed forms: distans; distantia; propius; proxime.

Nearness and distance, spatial or causal according to context. The action model requires agent and patient close together, whereas nature’s greater intimacy with its matter accompanies greater independence in substance. References: I.2.2, I.3.17. See Indwelling and presence.

reperio / insum

reperio / insum. Printed forms: Insunt; reperitur; reperiuntur.

To find and to be present within. Qualities coexist throughout honey, unextended qualities are said to occur in mathematical items, and a higher form is argued to have a place in reality. References: I.2.15, I.2.16, I.3.2. See Indwelling and presence.

Epinomis (authorities and cited works)

Epinomis. The closing quotation concerning soul present to or dwelling within cosmic bodies follows Ficino's theological reservation. Its alternatives should remain visible. IV.1.96. See Indwelling and presence.

Use in the book

At the end of VI.6 Ficino reports short arguments supplied by unnamed others. If soul’s divided parts live, the whole vital nature is in each and does not diminish with division; if they do not, life would be constructed from nonliving things. Other tests contrast bodily perceptibility, boundaries and temporally divisible action with soul’s invisibility, lack of bodily outline and capacity to act in an instant. These compact arguments are not all the same proof and carry a reported introduction.

Body fills place by quantity. Soul gives being when present, and being proceeds from essence; its presence is accordingly essential. Nor is it contained by body as a body is by a place. It perfects, contains and guides body. VI.9 elaborates this argument: giving substantial being and operation to each member requires communicating essence and power there. Whole presence is not the distribution of little soul-pieces. The comparative “more indivisible than a line or point” expresses a superiority to geometrical entities still dependent on a corporeal subject.

Places to read

1. VI.6.4, VI.6.5A reported sequence distinguishes essential presence, containment and quantitative placement.
2. VI.9.2, VI.9.3Presence in members is inferred from their being, unity and immanent operations.

Translation in this edition

“Comprehended” and “comprehending” should be read through the following verbs perficit, continet and ducit. “In an instant” is Ficino’s contrast with bodily temporal division, not an empirical claim about modern cognitive processing speed.

comprehendere

comprehendere. Printed forms: comprehendens; comprehensa; continet.

To contain or embrace, actively rather than passively. Soul perfects and guides body; body does not enclose it as a place encloses a material occupant. References: VI.6.4. See Essential presence and containment.

dare; tribuere; praestare

dare; tribuere; praestare. Printed forms: dat; praestare; praestat; tribuat; tribuere; tribuit.

To give, impart or supply; praestare can also mean surpass in excellence. The source gives life or being to a recipient, whereas the comparative claim that reason surpasses beasts uses a different construction and must not be translated as donation. References: VI.2.9, VI.2.12, VI.5.1, VI.6.4, VI.9.2. See Essential presence and containment.

imponere; implere; continere

imponere; implere; continere. Printed forms: contineat; contineatur; continet; implere; impleret; implet; imponat; imponit.

To impose a limit, fill, or contain. A body fills place quantitatively, while soul’s whole presence and containment are causal and essential; imposing growth’s limit is a governing act. References: VI.2.3, VI.4.4, VI.6.1, VI.6.4, VI.9.4, VI.13.8. See Essential presence and containment.

innotescere; circumscribere

innotescere; circumscribere. Printed forms: circumscribitur; innotescere.

To become known to sense and be enclosed by a figure or boundary. The short arguments contrast body’s sensible bounded character with soul’s absence of such a bodily profile. References: VI.6.4. See Essential presence and containment.

intervallum temporis

intervallum temporis. Printed forms: momento temporis; temporis intervallo.

An interval and an instant of time. Bodily divisibility is contrasted with the soul’s claimed capacity for instantaneous operation. References: VI.6.4. See Essential presence and containment.

magis indivisibilis

magis indivisibilis. Printed forms: magis indivisibilis.

More indivisible, expressing superiority to geometrical dependence. Soul surpasses even a point because a point remains in a bodily subject and at a determinate site. References: VI.6.5. See Essential presence and containment.

particula vivere

particula vivere. Printed forms: partes eius vivant; tota anima in singulis.

The proposed life of each part and whole soul’s presence in each. If division leaves the complete vital nature, quantity is not necessary to its activity. References: VI.6.4. See Essential presence and containment.

per essentiam; per quantitatem

per essentiam; per quantitatem. Printed forms: per essentiam; per quantitatem.

Presence by essence rather than filling place through extension. Soul gives being where present, so its relation to body is not the placement of another body within a container. References: VI.6.4. See Essential presence and containment.

persuasio

persuasio. Printed forms: persuasiones.

A brief persuasive argument, here reported from unnamed others. The group of tests ranges over living parts, perceptibility, boundaries, timing, presence and containment. References: VI.6.4. See Essential presence and containment.

totus

totus. Printed forms: tota; totam; toti; totius; toto; totum.

Whole or entire, whose mode depends on the thing described. Soul whole in each member is not a body’s distributed entirety; the self-motion proofs require activity throughout the primary principle rather than only in one part. References: VI.1.6, VI.3.1, VI.6.4, VI.8.4, VI.9.2, VI.12.1. See Essential presence and containment.

Use in the book

A bodily part cannot equal the bodily whole, so a form spread dimensionally through body cannot be wholly present in each part. Ficino contrasts this limitation with the soul’s awareness of a localized injury. The same soul turns eye, hand and mouth toward a hurt foot; it therefore senses there while remaining the source of life and action elsewhere.

The comparison with whiteness sharpens the distinction. A patch of white can be stained without all whiteness changing. In the living being, however, an occurrence in a tiny bodily part concerns the whole soul. Ficino invokes Augustine’s account: soul extends by vital intensity rather than local diffusion, whole in all and whole in each, neither smaller in smaller parts nor larger in larger ones. More and less intensity are allowed without quantitative partition. Awareness of one touched spot does not require the touch to spread through the body, and attention there does not require abandonment of the other living parts.

This is not an assertion that every injury physically affects every organ. Its point is precisely the combination of localized bodily affection and unified awareness. The ensuing objection relocates a principal judge to the brain and proposes successive reports through soul-parts; the following unit rejects that division. “Whole everywhere” consequently belongs to a disputed account of the soul’s presence, not a casual synonym for bodily omnipresence.

The force of “whole” can be missed if it is translated into a collective formula such as “all the soul’s parts eventually learn of the injury.” Ficino’s claim is the opposite: the soul is not divided into spatially assigned knowers that must exchange their private experiences. The complete judging subject is already present where the event occurs. That same complete subject continues animating uninjured members, which is why eye, hand and mouth can cooperate without becoming parts of the foot’s bodily lesion.

The Augustine passage adds a useful simultaneous case. If the touched event happened elsewhere as well, both would be known to the whole soul. The soul need not leave one location, travel to another and return with a report. Nor does one event’s being known require that the physical event occur throughout the organism. This separates three claims that are easily confused: the affection has a determinate bodily site; awareness belongs to the whole soul; and the same soul remains present to the body’s other living parts. The case of two events demonstrates why the account cannot be reduced to a temporary concentration of soul in a single location.

The language of intensity permits difference without division. An operation may be more vigorous or an organ better suited to its exercise, while soul is no larger there. The contrast is not between equal and unequal shares of a spatial substance; it is between ways of manifesting a power whose source is undivided. That is why the translation’s paired intensius and remissius must remain beside the explicit denial of greater and smaller soul in greater and smaller members. Dropping either half would make the passage sound like either uniform bodily extension or an unexplained denial of all organic difference.

The later physiological account also prevents a false consequence. Whole soul in each member does not say that every member performs every sensory function in the same way. Chapter 6 calls touch universal throughout the members, while assigning hearing and vision their particular media and instruments. Whole presence of the animating and judging subject is compatible with differentiated organs. The precise explanation of how those roles fit together belongs to Ficino’s account; one should not replace it with a flat claim that the foot literally sees because the whole soul is there.

This distinction is important when the text shifts to severed creatures. Whole presence in the organized animal and survival in a detached member are different questions. The next unit expressly denies that more perfect souls live in separate members lacking their requisite organs. It also allows the original low animal soul to perish when its bodily framework dissolves. Thus the whole-presence argument concerns how a soul animates and knows within its living body; it does not, by itself, establish every soul’s continued existence after that body is dismembered.

Places to read

1. VII.5.1Coordinated response to an injured foot introduces whole presence.
2. VII.5.2Whiteness and Augustine’s vital intensity distinguish local change from unified awareness.
3. VII.5.3The reply to successive reporting concludes with whole immediate coordination.

Translation in this edition

The Augustine passage is an attribution made by Ficino, not an independently collated quotation here. Aurelius names the same authority at its close. The edition’s “more intense” and “less intense” preserve a distinction from greater and smaller spatial extension.

aequalis pars / totum

aequalis pars / totum. Printed forms: aequalem; aequalis; pars; toti.

The relation of part to whole in bodily magnitude. A bodily part cannot equal its whole, whereas the whole soul is argued to be present in each bodily part. References: VII.5.1. See Whole presence and vital intensity.

albedo / inficere / foedare

albedo / inficere / foedare. Printed forms: albedini; albedinisque; foedari; infici; pollutis.

Whiteness, staining, disfiguring and pollution as local changes of a bodily quality. One white region can be stained while the rest remains white; soul’s whole awareness differs from this divided distribution. References: VII.5.2. See Whole presence and vital intensity.

Augustinus / Aurelius

Augustinus / Aurelius. Printed forms: Augustinus; Aurelius.

Augustine, cited under both his familiar name and Aurelius. Ficino invokes his account of the soul’s nonlocal whole presence; the citation has not been independently collated here. References: VII.5.2. See Whole presence and vital intensity.

commutare

commutare. Printed forms: commutet.

To alter or change something. An alteration of one region of bodily whiteness need not change all the other regions, unlike the whole soul’s awareness of a local event. References: VII.5.2. See Whole presence and vital intensity.

compati / consonare / concurrere

compati / consonare / concurrere. Printed forms: compatiantur; compatiatur; concurrant; consonet.

To suffer together, accord and act in concert. This positive language of concord describes coordinated soul, without identifying its substance with a humoral harmony. References: VII.5.3. See Whole presence and vital intensity.

deserere

deserere. Printed forms: deserit.

To abandon or leave. The soul does not leave uninjured members in order to be wholly aware at the touched place; they continue living through its presence. References: VII.5.2. See Whole presence and vital intensity.

diffundere / spargere / porrigere

diffundere / spargere / porrigere. Printed forms: diffusa; fusa; porrectam; porrigitur; sparsae; sparsam.

To diffuse, scatter or extend, with bodily distribution distinguished from the soul’s presence. Whiteness and other diffused forms have divided regions; the whole soul’s vital presence is expressly not such local distribution. References: VII.2.2, VII.5.2, VII.5.3, VII.7.1. See Whole presence and vital intensity.

intensius / remissius

intensius / remissius. Printed forms: intensius; remissius.

More intensely and less intensely. Different organs can manifest different intensity without the soul being spatially larger in one and smaller in another. References: VII.5.2. See Whole presence and vital intensity.

localis diffusio / vitalis intensio

localis diffusio / vitalis intensio. Printed forms: diffusione; intensione; locali; locali diffusione; porrectam; porrigitur; sparsae; vitali; vitali intensione.

Spatial diffusion contrasted with life-giving intensity. The soul’s extension through the body is described by intensity of animation, not by larger and smaller pieces of soul. References: VII.5.2. See Whole presence and vital intensity.

praesentia / absentia

praesentia / absentia. Printed forms: absens; absente; adsit; praesens; praesente; praesentia.

Being present or absent to a bodily event or member. Whole presence is used to explain awareness without abandonment of other living members; it must not be reduced to spatial filling. References: VII.5.1, VII.5.2, VII.6.1. See Whole presence and vital intensity.

Presence or absence of the original bodily object to the faculty's activity. Sight needs Plato present, whereas imagination can retain and combine his features when he is absent. References: VIII.1.1. See Four stages of cognition.

tangere

tangere. Printed forms: tangatur; tangi; tangit; tangitur.

To touch, the proposed physical route by which a bodily quality could affect soul. Ficino tests point-contact and divisible-part contact before distinguishing nondestructive reception of images. References: V.6.1. See Indivisibility and contact.

To touch or make contact. Contact at a line’s endpoints is hypothetical; a touch at a tiny bodily point supplies the whole-awareness example. References: VII.2.2, VII.5.2. See Whole presence and vital intensity.

tota adesse

tota adesse. Printed forms: adest tota; Tota; tota; Tota igitur; tota sentit; totam.

Whole presence and whole awareness. The repeated tota denies that only one fraction of the soul senses the injury occurring in one bodily part. References: VII.5.1. See Whole presence and vital intensity.

Augustine (authorities and interlocutors)

Augustine. Augustine supports direct divine creation, the stable mind directing bodily movement, whole presence and active sensation in different passages. These local appeals have distinct argumentative functions and should not be collapsed into a single quotation. References: V.13.1, V.15.5, VII.5.2, VII.6.3. See Divine production and the third essence; Time, memory and expectation; Whole presence and vital intensity; Sensation as attentive activity.