Chapter 2 Matter as a Mirror: Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance ...

Matter as a Mirror 81
to this solution); or that matter becomes different on each level of being. This
is the position Ficino holds in the Sophist commentary, which envisages the
idea that each degree of being undergoes a radical change from passive and
hence material object to acting subject in the process of being shaped by the
higher hypostasis.
The closer we come to the centre of the universe, to the terrestrial
realm, the less matter (the dark aspect of creation) will be able to accommodate
the ever changing forms in the way they peacefully co-operate in
the higher world of mental, invisible, light. 107 In the middle of the earth even
celestial fire transforms into a hellish dark heat:
the immense size, power and motion of celestial beings
brings it about that all the rays of all the stars penetrate in a
moment the mass of the earth (which is as a point in relation
to the sky) and with consummate ease straight to the centre.
In the centre, as the Pythagoreans and Platonists would have
it, the rays are strongest, both because they touch the centre
perpendicularly on all sides and because they are all collected
in a confined space. By the ray’s intensity, the material of
the earth there — being dry and far from any moisture —
is immediately kindled, and, once kindled, is vaporized and
dispersed through channels in all directions and blows out
both flames and sulphur. But they think that this fire is very
dark and, as it were, a sort of flame without light, just as the
heavens light is without flame, whereas the fire between the
celestial and the infernal combines light and heat. 108
107 In Timaeum chapt. XVII[I], OO 144/441: “non solum vero distinctionem formarum,
sed etiam repugnatiam videmus in mundo, procedit enim a primo, & procedendo
degenerat. Processio quidem distinctionem facit: degeneratio repugnantiam.”
108 De vita III, 16: 320–332: “Immensa ferme coelestium magnitudo, virtus, motio
facit, ut omnes omnium siderum radii terrae molem, quae quasi punctum est ad coelum,
momento facillimeque usque ad centrum recti penetrent, […]. Ibique, ut placet Pythagoreis
atque Platonicis, fortissimi sunt, tum quia recti undique centrum tangunt, tum
quia in angustum collecti sunt cuncti. Quorum vehementia materia ibi terrae sicca, procul
ab humore remota, prorsus accenditur accensaque extenuatur atque dispergitur per meatus
undique et efflat incendia pariter atque sulphur. Sed ignem hunc putant valde caliginosum
esse et quasi incendium quoddam luminis expers, sicut in coelo extat expers incendii
lumen; ignis autem inter coelestem atque infernum luminem cum fervore coniungit.” In