Renaissance and

consciously embracing such striving, knows the Since eachprimum or species-essence seeks in turn
fundamental law of existence, its own source in God, or universal essence, the entire
chain of being is animated by its natural tendency
Again, the intellect is prompted by nature to cornprehend
the whole breadth of being; in its notion it
(appetitus naturalis) to self-perfection. Self-
perceives all, and in the notion of all, it contemplates perfection is the invariant of God's universe. Thus,
itself; under the concept of the truth it knows all, and perfectibility of the universeis the law of the universe.
under the concept of the good it desires all. (15)
If individual motions are brought to completion
In his Five Questions, Ficino demonstrates that the according to such a wonderful order, then certainly the
only coherent view of the universe is that the human universal motion of the cosmos cannot be lacking in
mind, as the highest expression of the soul, must be of perfect order. (19)
the same order of perfection as God himself. Ficino From the condition in which the intellect exercises
specifically adopts the scholastic form of proof, the freedom to know its true nature, natural does not
Questions, to make evident both to the skeptics of the
mean without effort. It is the exercise of truly human
atheist variety and to the scholasitc dogmatists the faculties that demands the greatest effort:
necessity of his argument.
Ficino achieves his elaboration relying on only one if we have concentrated our powers in this most fruitful
elementary assumption: perfection exists within the part of the soul, then without doubt by means of this
universe. His unique realization is that the human highest part itself, that is by means of the mind, we
mind participates in that perfection and therefore shall ourselves have the power of creating mind. (20)
human praxis must correspond naturally (i.e., It is clear from such a statement that Ficino has
lawfully) to seeking perfection, penetrated the activity of his own mind and identified
creative mentation, "the highest part," as its
Each of all natural species proceeds according to a
certain principle. (16) characteristic feature.
For Ficino the highest part, the intellect, strives to
This is Ficino's principle of "appetitus naturalis", make the entire universe an object for itself. The in-
He and Pico are explicit that someone who resists the tellect strives to know itself as universal:
natural perfection of his soul is not human, in the
species sense of human, the intellect strives to bring it about that the universe
in a certain manner should become intellect. (21)
Nero was, so to speak, not a man but a monster,
being akin to man only by his skin. Had he really been a Creative mentation, mind creating mind, is the
, man he would have loved other men as members of the generative principle of the universe itself, by which
same body. For as individual men are under one Idea
and under one species they are like one man. the intellect, both in substance and in form, realizes
Therefore, I think, among all the virtues the sages the highest form of perfection.
called by the name of man himself, only that virtue Counterpose to Ficino's notions of universe and
that loves and helps all men as brothers deriving in a
long series from one father, in other words, intellect the proposed explanation of universal
humanity. (17) causation espoused by such zero-growth fanatics as
the Dominicans, or the literary atheists such as Valla.
In his second fundamental principle, "'primum in The Dominican Way represents a true picture of the
aliquo genere,'" Ficino identifies the general law reductionist mode of thinking. It assumes a static
underlying generation and development in the universe in which each individual is considered from
universe. In it he establishes that the essence of each the standpoint of simple self-evidence. God punishes
species is also its cause, and that members of each or rewards on the dictates of purely external features.
species in respect to their essence or "primum" are Salvation is a purely mechanical matter. Freedom is
predicates whose essential nature or appetite is to the abberation from the path, the merely wild or
seek their perfection in respect to that essence. Here, licentious, as in the secular themes of Boccaccio's
in primitive but nevertheless clearly discernable Decameron. Thus, life is reduced either to the chains
form, is the kernel of the notion of the self-subsisting of external authority or to anarchism. For Valla
positive, atheism is secular anarchy.
It was particularly the scientific tendencies typical
In this common order of the whole, all things, no of advanced thinking that enraged these pathetic
matter how diverse, are brought back to unity, according
to a single determined harmony and rational "thinkers." The scientific tradition was actually
plan. (18) guilty of seeking to achieve man's hegemony over
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