From the book
Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II
Marsilio Ficino · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordTradere transmits or hands on, adimere removes, and sumere receives or takes up.
- In the Platonic TheologyThe book's final argument excludes conversion into body by examining how body receives form through soul.
- In this editionThe source treats ut anima per animam corpus fieret conditionally from its context: if soul became body, it would have to do so through soul.
- A place to readNatural priority and nonspatial nearness establish soul’s mediation of bodily form.
Meaning
Tradere transmits or hands on, adimere removes, and sumere receives or takes up. Propinquitas is nearness, here explicitly ordered by nature rather than spatial distance. Greater power and goodness concern form, not merely greater bodily bulk, moles.
Use in the book
The book's final argument excludes conversion into body by examining how body receives form through soul. V.15.25–2723 presents the order as supreme essence or beauty, rational soul, derivative life and body. The argument must preserve both a real communication to lower beings and the identity of the higher giver.
The first premise carefully orders two relations often confused by a spatial picture. Soul joins a body occupying a place, but does not itself join by occupying an adjacent place or becoming a divisible segment. Eternal principles likewise are not situated in a spatial region. Soul's being prior and nearer to them means greater participation in the natural order. Because of that priority it is affected more fully before body receives a mediated form. “Before” is explanatory priority here, not necessarily the claim that one event occurs several seconds earlier.
V.15.25 explicitly gives both universal and particular applications: the animated world and each animal within it. The proposed change into body must operate within that same order, since no body arises without receiving form through soul. The difficult formula “soul through soul would become body” makes the circular requirement audible. The agent whose identity is to be lost is also the necessary continuing agent of the proposed result. Keeping the repeated anima is therefore philosophically useful rather than a stylistic blemish to remove.
The next unit tests whether a body could obtain its form without that dependence. If it receives none, it does not come to be; if it receives with the same immediacy as soul, it occupies soul's rank rather than the bodily rank under consideration. Ficino is relying on his hierarchy of modes of reception, so this is not a free-standing proof against every conceivable theory of matter. Within that hierarchy there is no fitting mediator between supreme immutable life and the last vivified term except vivifying soul.
Transmission and removal are consequently opposed causal descriptions. Soul gives form to a body while keeping the form by which it gives. Conversion into body would require stripping the soul of its own superior form. One act cannot both preserve and remove that mediating condition in the needed respect. The final extension to irrational life uses the same pattern: a lower effect cannot be produced by abolishing the higher source that its production presupposes.
The closing association of power and goodness does not reduce superiority to force. These natures are stronger through the form by which they are better; they do not grow more powerful by adding spatial volume. The distinction completes the book's contrast between divisible persistence of body and self-maintaining life of soul. It also supplies a useful cross-reference back to teaching: communicating an intelligible form need not be a material transfer that impoverishes the giver.
Places to read
Translation in this edition
The source treats ut anima per animam corpus fieret conditionally from its context: if soul became body, it would have to do so through soul. The difficult repetition is not silently deleted. The editorial subdivisions V.15.26–272 preserve the continuation of the source paragraph.
adimere
adimere. Printed forms: ademptione; adimentem; adimit; amittendo.
To remove or take away; amittere supplies the corresponding loss. Making soul into body would remove the very form needed to communicate form to body, defeating the proposed change. References: V.15.25, V.15.26, V.15.27. See Transmission of form and natural order.
corpus / corporalis
corpus / corporalis. Printed forms: corporales; Corporales; corporali; corporalia; corporalis; corporalium; corpore; corporea; corporeo; corpori; corporibus; corporis; corporum; corpus; Corpus.
Body and bodily, the extended and temporally changing order contrasted with separate form. A body can persist generically while its individual form perishes; bodily dependence does not determine the rational soul's essence. References: V.3.1, V.7.2, V.10.2, V.11.7, V.11.8, V.13.18, V.15.1, V.15.2, V.15.27. See Transmission of form and natural order.
Body, or belonging to bodily magnitude and modification. Receiving parts in parts is the hypothesized bodily mode whose restrictions Ficino denies of cognition. References: VII.1.1, VII.4.1. See Receiving images: wax, seals and mirrors.
dare / tribuere / praestare
dare / tribuere / praestare. Printed forms: dabit; dat; datur; praebet; praestat; tribuere; tribuit.
To give, bestow or supply a perfection or act. Giving life, form and being differ by agent and scope; communication need not remove the giver's own possession. References: V.1.1, V.4.10, V.13.2, V.13.4, V.14.1, V.15.25. See Transmission of form and natural order.
moles
moles. Printed forms: mole; molibus; molis.
Bodily bulk or mass. Form and unity rather than sheer bulk explain a body's degree of organization, and greater psychic power need not mean spatial swelling. References: V.15.6, V.15.27. See Transmission of form and natural order.
non localiter
non localiter. Printed forms: non localiter; non secundum locum.
Not by spatial location, describing soul's conjunction with body and intelligibles. Nearness to eternal principles is explicitly a matter of natural order rather than physical distance. References: V.15.12, V.15.25. See Transmission of form and natural order.
potentior / melior
potentior / melior. Printed forms: melior; meliora; melius; Potentior; potentior; potentiora; potentiorem.
More powerful and better in the hierarchy of forms. The final argument links strength to formal excellence, not to greater local magnitude or swelling bulk. References: V.13.5, V.15.8, V.15.21, V.15.25, V.15.27. See Transmission of form and natural order.
propinquitas / naturae ordo
propinquitas / naturae ordo. Printed forms: naturae ordine; naturali ordine; propinquitas.
Nearness and the order of nature, marking causal rank rather than physical adjacency. Soul receives form more immediately than body and communicates it downward while remaining itself. References: V.15.25, V.15.27. See Transmission of form and natural order.
sumere
sumere. Printed forms: sumeret; sumit.
To take or receive from a source. If body received as immediately as soul, Ficino argues, it would no longer have the lower mode defined as body. References: V.15.26. See Transmission of form and natural order.
tradere
tradere. Printed forms: tradendo; tradit; traditione; traditur; Tradunt; tradunt.
To transmit or hand on a form. The higher nature gives what it receives without losing it; the soul's continued identity is required for the body's reception. References: V.15.26, V.15.27. See Transmission of form and natural order.
tumor
tumor. Printed forms: tumore.
Swelling or bulk, here denied as the measure of incorporeal power. Higher natures act more powerfully through form without occupying larger space. References: V.15.27. See Transmission of form and natural order.