A Book on Life Divided intoThree Books

De vita libri tres(excerpts)*

Marsilio Ficino

*From Three Books on Life, A Critical Edition and Transla-tion with Introduction and Notes (De vita libri tres) Carol V. Kaskeand John R. Clark. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, inconjunction with The Renaissance Society of America. Tempe,Arizona, 1998.

1

The Words of Marsilio Ficinoto the Reader of the Following BookHail, intellectual guest! Hail to you, too,whosoever you are who approaches ourthreshold desiring health! See, eagerguest, first of all, how hospitable I am.For certainly it was the role of the vis-itor, to first salute the hostelry; but I,before you could salute me, have salutedyou as soon as I saw you. I have gladlywelcomed you while you were enteringand as yet unknown. And if you staywith me awhile, I will give you, pleaseGod, the health [salute] I promised you.You have gained a lodging friendly toall and now full of love towards you.If by chance you bring with you any-thing contrary to love, if you have anyhate, please dispose of it first, beforeyou approach the life-giving medicineshere. For it was the love and pleasure

of your parents that gave you life. Con-versely, hate and displeasure take awaylife. Therefore the person who harborsdisagreeable resentment, has no share inlife-giving medicine. So from now on Iaddress you not only as my guest but asmy friend.

♦

Book One, On a Healthy LifeChapter I

The Nine Guides of ScholarsAnyone who enters upon that rough, arduous, andlong journey which barely, at the last, by continualhardship leads through to the high temple of thenine Muses, seems to need exactly nine guides in thisjourney. The first three lead us in the heavens, thenext three in the soul, the last three on earth.To begin with, in the heavens, Mercury either

impels or exhorts us that we should undertake the

journey in search of the Muses, since to Mercury isattributed the charge of every investigation. Next isPhoebus, who so illuminates the seeking souls andthe things sought with copious light, that we findclearly what we sought. Gracious Venus is added, themother of the graces; and with her all-bountiful andjoyful rays she so enhances and adorns the material,that whatever both byMercury’s instigation has beensought and by Phoebus’s showing has been found,is invested with Venus’s wonderful and health-givingcharm and always delights and profits.There follow three guides of this journey in the

soul—that is, a fierce and firm will, sharpness of in-telligence, and a tenacious memory.The last three are on earth—a prudent father,

a thoroughly accredited teacher, and a thoroughlyexperienced physician (prudentissimus paterfamilias,probatissimus praeceptor, medicus peritissimus). Andwithout these nine guides, no man either has beenor ever will be able to get all the way to the temple ofthe nine Muses. God omnipotent and nature, indeed,assigned the other guides to us from the beginning;

the last three, however, are summoned by our di-ligence (nostra adhibet diligentia). But the preceptsand duties appertaining to the father and the teacherin literary studies have been treated by many wiseauthors of antiquity, especially my author Plato, of-ten elsewhere but most exhaustively in his books Onthe Republic and On the Laws, then Aristotle in hisPolitics, Plutarch also, and Quintilian unusually well.Only a physician is as yet a desideratum for literaryscholars—one who might reach a hand to them asthey go, and help with salutary counsels and medi-cines those who already have the heavens, the mind,the father, and the teacher. Since I pity the burden-some lot of those who make the difficult journey ofMinerva who shrinks the sinews, I am the first toattend as a physician sick and invalid scholars; butwould that my ability were as sound as my will isdedicated! Rise up, now, God leading, those of youwho are still lively adolescents! Rise up, young peopleand mature people enervated by too fierce pursuitof Minerva! Gladly approach the physician who willdispense to you (God revealing and helping) salut-

ary counsels and remedies for the accomplishmentof your purpose!

Chapter IIWhat Diligent Care We Should Take of the Brain,

the Heart, the Stomach, and the SpiritIn the first place, as much care as runners habituallytake of their legs, athletes of their arms, musiciansof their voice, even so it behooves literary scholarsto have at least as much concern for their brain andheart, their liver and stomach—and indeed so muchthe more, in proportion as the latter parts are moreexcellent than are the former and literary scholars usetheir parts more frequently and for more importantthings than the former people do theirs. Moreover,an expert craftsman takes most diligent care of hisinstruments—a painter his pencils, a coppersmith hishammers and anvils, a soldier his horses and arms, ahunter his dogs and birds, a lute-player his lute, andthe same goes for anyone and the tools of his trade.But only the priests of the Muses, only the huntersafter the highest good and truth, are so negligent (oh

shame!) and so unfortunate, that they seem wholly toneglect that instrument with which they are able ina way to measure and grasp the whole world. This in-strument is the spirit, which is defined by doctors asa vapor of blood—pure, subtle, hot, and clear. Afterbeing generated by the heat of the heart out of themore subtle blood, it flies to the brain; and there thesoul uses it continually for the exercise of the interioras well as the exterior senses. This is why the bloodsubserves the spirit; the spirit, the senses; and finally,the senses, reason. Now the blood is made by thatnatural power which flourishes in the liver and thestomach. The lightest part of the blood flows intothe fountain of the heart, where flourishes the vitalpower. The spirits generated from this ascend to thecitadels of the brain and (as I might say) of Pallas; inthese [citadels, i.e., the brain] the animal force, thatis, the power of sense and motion, dominates. Thus,undoubtedly the contemplation is usually as good asis the compliance of the sense; the sense is as goodas is the spirit; the spirit is as good as is both theblood and those three forces which we mentioned—

i.e., the natural, vital, and animal, by which, throughwhich, and in which the spirits themselves are con-ceived, born, and nourished.

Chapter IIILearned People Are Subject to Phlegm and Black

Bile (melancholia)Not only should learned people take very diligentcare of those members and of the powers and of thespirits, but also they are told always scrupulously toavoid phlegm and black bile (μελαγχολία), even assailors do Scylla and Charybdis. For just as they areinactive in the rest of the body, so they are busy inthe brain and the mind. From the former circum-stance they are compelled to secrete pituita, whichthe Greeks call phlegm, and from the latter, blackbile, which they call melancholy. Phlegm dulls andsuffocates the intelligence, while melancholy, if it istoo abundant or vehement, vexes the mind with con-tinual care and frequent absurdities and unsettles thejudgment. Hence it can justly be said that learnedpeople would even be unusually healthy, were they

not burdened by phlegm, and the happiest and wisestof mortals, were they not driven by the bad effects ofblack bile to depression and even sometimes to folly.

Chapter IVHow Many Things Cause Learned PeopleEither To Be Melancholy or To Eventually

Become SoIn the main, three kinds of causes make learnedpeople melancholics. The first is celestial, the secondnatural, and the third human. The celestial: becausebothMercury, who invites us to investigate doctrines,and Saturn, who makes us persevere in investigatingdoctrines and retain them when discovered, are saidby astronomers to be somewhat cold and dry (or ifit should happen to be true that Mercury is not cold,he is nonetheless often very dry by virtue of his near-ness to the Sun), just like the melancholic nature,according to physicians. And this same nature Mer-cury and Saturn impart from birth to their followers,learned people, and preserve and augment it day byday.

The natural cause seems to be that for the pur-suit of the sciences, especially the difficult ones, thesoul must draw in upon itself from external thingsto internal as from the circumference to the center,and while it speculates, it must stay immovably, soto speak, at the very center of man (in ipso hominiscentro stabilissime permanere). Now to collect oneselffrom the circumference to the center, and to be fixedin the center, is above all the property of the Earthitself, to which black bile is analogous.Therefore black bile continually incites the soul

both to collect itself together into one and to dwell onitself and to contemplate itself. And being analogousto the world’s center, it forces the investigation to thecenter of individual subjects, and it carries one to thecontemplation of whatever is highest, since, indeed,it is most congruent with Saturn, the highest of plan-ets. Contemplation itself, in its turn, by a continualrecollection and compression, as it were, brings on anature similar to black bile.The human cause, that which comes from

ourselves, is as follows: Because frequent agitation of

the mind greatly dries up the brain, therefore, whenthe moisture has been mostly consumed—moisturebeing the support of the natural heat—the heatalso is usually extinguished; and from this chain ofevents, the nature of the brain becomes dry and cold,which is known as the earthy and melancholic qual-ity. Moreover, on account of the repeated movementsof inquiry, the spirits continually move and get dis-persed. But when the spirits are dispersed, they haveto be restored out of the more subtle blood. Andhence, when the more subtle and clear parts of theblood frequently get used up, the rest of the bloodis necessarily rendered dense, dry and black. On topof this, nature in contemplation is directed whollyto the brain and heart and deserts the stomach andliver. For this reason foods, especially the more fattyor harsh foods, are poorly digested, and as a resultthe blood is rendered cold, thick, and black. Finally,with too little physical exercise, superfluities are notcarried off and the thick, dense, clinging, dusky va-pors do not exhale. All these things characteristicallymake the spirit melancholy and the soul sad and

fearful—since, indeed, interior darkness much morethan exterior overcomes the soul with sadness andterrifies it. But of all learned people, those especiallyare oppressed by black bile, who, being sedulouslydevoted to the study of philosophy, recall their mindfrom the body and corporeal things and apply it toincorporeal things. The cause is, first, that the moredifficult the work, the greater concentration of mindit requires; and second, that the more they applytheir mind to incorporeal truth, the more they arecompelled to disjoin it from the body. Hence theirbody is often rendered as if it were half-alive and of-ten melancholic. My author Plato signified this in theTimaeus; he said that the soul contemplating divinethings assiduously and intently grows up so much onfood of this kind and becomes so powerful, that itoverreaches its body above what the corporeal naturecan endure; and sometimes in its too vehement agit-ation, it either in a way flies out of it or sometimesseems as if to disintegrate it.

Chapter XXVICare for the Corporeal Spirit; Cultivate theIncorporeal, and Lastly, Venerate the Truth.Medicine Takes Care of the First, Moral

Discipline, the Second, but Religion, the ThirdIf lovers of truth ought to care for the corporeal spiritwith such great efforts of doctors lest it either, if en-tirely neglected, prove a hindrance in their pursuit oftruth, or else serve them inadequately, then no doubtthey must try still harder to cultivate with the teach-ings of moral philosophy the incorporeal spirit, i.e.,the intellect, by which alone truth, being itself in-corporeal, is apprehended. For it is wrong to cherishonly the slave of the soul, the body, and to neglectthe soul, the lord and ruler of the body, especiallysince the Magi and Plato assert that the entire bodydepends upon the soul in such a way that if the soulis not well, the body cannot be well. This is whyApollo, the founder of medicine, decided the wisestman was not Hippocrates, though born of his ownrace, but Socrates, since, while Hippocrates strove to

heal the body, Socrates strove to heal the soul. ButChrist alone accomplished what those men attemp-ted.Thus, if we are enjoined by Socrates to cultivate

our mind by behaving in the best way to the endthat with a serene mind we may the more easily ac-quire the light and truth which we sought by theinstinct of nature, how much more is it right to ven-erate above all that divine truth by holy religion? Themind was created for seeking and receiving it no lessthan the eye was created for beholding the light ofthe Sun. And as my author Plato says, just as theeyesight nowhere sees anything visible except in theradiance of the highest thing visible, that is, the Sunitself, so the human intellect apprehends nothing in-telligible, except in the light of the highest thingintelligible, that is, in the light of God, which is al-ways and everywhere present for us—in the light, Isay, which lights every man coming into this world,in the light of which David sings, “in your light shallwe see light.”

∞

Book Two, On a Long LifeChapter I

To Perfect Your Knowledge,You Need a Long Life;

One Way to Procure It Is by EffortNeither a teachable intelligence nor firmness ofmemory leads us to perfect skill and knowledgeso much as does the discrimination of a prudentjudgment. But judgment, because of the ambiguitycreated by the diversity of conjectures, is so difficultthat it must be confirmed by the requisite experience.Experience is also deceptive both because of the dif-ficulty of judgment itself and because of the fleetingbrevity of the opportune time for apprehending theexperience. This is why we are certainly right to con-clude with Hippocrates that art is long and we canonly attain it by a long life. But a long life is not justsomething the fates promise once for all from thebeginning, but something that is procured by our ef-fort. This is both acknowledged by astrologers, whenthey deal with elections and images, and confirmed

by the careful concern and the experience of phys-icians. Through this foresight not only do peoplewho are strong by nature very often attain a longlife but also sometimes the weakest, so that it is notsurprising that a man named Herodicus, as Plato andAristotle declare, a scholar and the feeblest of all themen of his age, by foresight of this sort lived to be al-most a hundred. Plutarch reports that many peoplewho were otherwise physically infirm have attaineda long life just by taking care of themselves. I passover for now the many sickly people I myself knowof who have lived longer than the strongest people bythe gift of prudence. It would therefore be profitableand fruitful, after the book I composedOn Caring forthe Health of Learned People, to put forward besides,for minds that are yearning for knowledge, some pre-cepts conducive to a long life. But I have no wish toimpart these instructions to indolent and lazy people.For why should we wish those people to live longwho do not even live, as if we were nourishing dronesand not bees? Nor do I wish them to be divulgedto people who are dissolute through their corrupt

passion for pleasures, fools who far prefer the briefpleasure that lasts only a day; nor disclosed to thewicked and unjust whose life is the death of goodmen; but only to prudent and temperate people ofsophisticated intelligence who will benefit mankind,whether in the private or the public sphere.

∞

Book Three, On Obtaining Life from the Heavens,Which He Composed among His Commentaries

on Plotinus’Chapter I

In What, According to Plotinus, the Power ofAttracting Favor from the Heavens Consists,

Namely, That Well-adapted Physical Forms CanEasily Allure the World-soul and the Souls of the

Stars and the DaemonsIf there were only these two things in the universe—on one side the Intellect, on the other the Body—butno Soul, then neither would the Intellect be attrac-ted to the Body (for Intellect is absolutely motionless,

without affect, which is the principle of motion, andvery far away from the Body), nor would the Bodybe drawn to the Intellect (for Body is in itself power-less, unsuited for motion, and far removed from theIntellect). But if a Soul which conforms to both wereplaced between them, an attraction will easily occurto each one on either side. In the first place, Soul isled most easily of all, since she is the Primum Mobileand movable of herself, of her own accord. Moreover,since, as I have said, she is the mean of things, inher own fashion she contains all things and is pro-portionally [Intellect:Soul::Soul:Body] near to both.Therefore she is equally connected with everything,even with those things which are at a distance fromone other, because they are not at a distance from her.For besides the fact that on the one side she conformsto the divine and on the other side to the transient,and even turns to each by desire, at the same timeshe is wholly and simultaneously everywhere.In addition, the World-soul possesses by divine

power precisely as many seminal reasons of things asthere are Ideas in the Divine Mind. By these seminal

reasons she fashions the same number of species inmatter. That is why every single species correspondsthrough its own seminal reason to its own Idea andoftentimes through this reason it can easily receivesomething from the Idea since indeed it was madethrough the reason from the Idea. This is why, ifat any time the species degenerates from its properform, it can be formed again with the reason as theproximate intermediary and, through the Idea as in-termediary, can then be easily reformed. And if inthe proper manner you bring to bear on a species,or on some individual in it, many things which aredispersed but which conform to the same Idea, intothis material thus suitably adapted you will soon drawa particular gift from the Idea, through the seminalreason of the Soul; for, properly speaking, it is not In-tellect itself which is led, but Soul. And so let no onethink that any divinities wholly separate from matterare being attracted by any given mundane materials,but that daemons rather are being attracted and giftsfrom the ensouled world and from the living stars.Again, let no man wonder that Soul can be allured

as it were by material forms, since indeed she herselfhas created baits of this kind suitable to herself, to beallured thereby, and she always and willingly dwellsin them. There is nothing to be found in this wholeliving world so deformed that Soul does not attend it,that a gift of the Soul is not in it. Therefore Zoroastercalled such correspondences of forms to the reasonsexisting in the World-soul “divine lures” and Syn-esius corroborated that they are magical baits.Finally, let no one believe that absolutely all gifts

are drawn from the Soul to any one particular spe-cies of matter at a specific time, but rather at theright moment only those gifts of that one seed fromwhich such a species has grown, and of seeds thatare similar to it. Accordingly, the person who hasemployed only human things, will thence claim forhimself not the gifts proper to fish or to birds butthe human gifts and similar ones. But if he employsthings which pertain to such and such a star and dae-mon, he undergoes the peculiar influence of this starand daemon, like a piece of wood treated with sulfurfor a flame that is everywhere present. And he under-

goes this influence not only through the rays of thestar and the daemon themselves, but also through thevery Soul of the World everywhere present. For thereason of any star and daemon flourishes in her. It ispartly a seminal reason so that she can generate, andpartly an exemplary reason so that she can know. Foraccording to the more ancient Platonists, from herreasons, the World-soul constructed in the heavensbesides the stars, figures and such parts of them as arealso themselves figures of a sort; and she impressedproperties on all these. In the stars, moreover—intheir figures, parts and properties—are contained allthe species of things below and their properties. Shearranged 48 universal figures: 12 in the zodiac and 36outside it; likewise she placed 36 more figures in thezodiac according to the number of its faces. Againshe arranged in the Zodiac 360 more figures accord-ing to the number of its degrees—for in each degreewhatsoever there are many stars that make up imagesthere. Similarly the images [constellations] outsidethe zodiac she divided into many figures [paranatel-lonta] according to the number of the Zodiacal faces

and degrees. Finally, she established certain relationsand proportions of the latter universal images to theformer universal images—relations and proportionswhich themselves are also images out there. Figuresof this kind each have their own coherence fromthe rays of their stars directed toward each other bytheir own special property. On these well-orderedforms the forms of lower things depend; they areordered by them. But even those celestial forms, be-ing [spatially] set apart from each other, proceedfrom reasons of the Soul that are joined together;and being forms somewhat changeable, they proceedfrom the reasons which are stable. But the reasons,insofar as they do not make up a unity, are tracedback to the Forms in the Intellect—the intellect inSoul and the higher Intellect—which do make up aunity; and these Forms, being multiples, are reducedto the perfectly simple One and Good, just as thecelestial figures diminish to a point at the Pole.But let us return to the Soul. When, therefore, the

Soul gives birth to the specific forms and the powerspertaining to the species of things below, she makes

them through their respective reasons with the aidof the stars and the celestial forms. But she producesthe endowments peculiar to individuals (which areoften in some individuals as marvelous as they habitu-ally are in the species themselves) likewise throughthe seminal reasons, but not so much with the aid ofcelestial forms and figures as by the location of theindividual stars and the relation of the motions andaspects of the planets both among themselves andwith respect to the stars which are above the planets.Now our own soul beyond the particular forces ofour members puts forth a general force of life every-where within us—especially through the heart as thesource of the fire which is the nearest thing to thesoul. In the same way theWorld-soul, which is activeeverywhere, unfolds in every place its power of uni-versal life principally through the Sun. Accordingly,some thinkers say the entire Soul, both in us and inthe universe, dwells in any member but most of allin the heart and in the sun.Always remember, though, that just as the power

of our soul is brought to bear on our members

through the spirit, so the force of the World-soulis spread under the World-soul through all thingsthrough the quintessence, which is active everywhere,as the spirit inside the World’s Body, but that thispower is instilled especially into those things whichhave absorbed the most of this kind of spirit. Thisquintessence can be ingested by us more and more ifa person knows how best to separate it, mixed in asit is with other elements, or at least how to use thosethings often which are filled with it, especially in itspurer form. Such things are: choice wine, sugar, bal-sam, gold, precious stones, myrobalans, and thingswhich smell most sweet and which shine, and es-pecially things which have in a subtle substance aquality hot, moist, and clear; such, besides wine, isthe whitest sugar, especially if you add to it gold andthe odor of cinnamon and roses. Then too, just asfoods we eat in the right way, although not them-selves alive, are converted through our spirit to theform of our life, so also our bodies rightly accom-modated to the body and spirit of the world (that isthrough cosmic things and through our spirit) drink

in as much as possible from the life of the world.If you want your food to take the form of your

brain above all, or of your liver, or of your stomach,eat as much as you can of like food, that is, of thebrain, liver, and stomach of animals which are not farremoved from the nature of man. If you want yourbody and spirit to receive power from some memberof the cosmos, say from the Sun, seek the thingswhich above all are most Solar among metals andgems, still more among plants, and more yet amonganimals, especially human beings; for surely thingswhich are more similar to you confer more of it.These must both be brought to bear externally and,so far as possible, taken internally, especially in theday and the hour of the Sun and while the Sun isdominant in a theme of the heavens.’* Solar thingsare: all those gems and flowers which are called he-liotrope because they turn towards the Sun, likewisegold, orpiment and golden colors, chrysolite, car-buncle, myrrh, frankincense, musk, amber, balsam,yellow honey, sweet calamus, saffron, spikenard, cin-namon, aloe-wood and the rest of the spices; the ram,

the hawk, the cock, the swan, the lion, the scarabbeetle, the crocodile, and people who are blond,curly-haired, prone to baldness, and magnanimous.The above-mentioned things can be adapted partlyto foods, partly to ointments and fumigations, partlyto usages and habits. You should frequently perceiveand think about these things and love them above all;you should also get a lot of light.If you suspect that your belly is being deprived of

the heat of the liver, draw the power of the liver tothe belly both by rubbing and by fomentations madefrom things which agree with the liver, namely fromchicory, endive, spodium, agrimony, hepatica, andlivers. In the same way, so that your body may not bedeprived of Jupiter, take physical exercise in Jupiter’sday and hour and when he is reigning; and in themeantime use Jovial things such as silver, jacinth, to-paz, coral, crystal, beryl, spodium, sapphire, greenand aery colors, wine, sugar, white honey; and en-tertain thoughts and feelings which are especiallyJovial, that is, steadfast, composed, religious, and law-abiding; and you will keep company with men of the

same kind—men who are sanguine, handsome, andvenerable. But remember to mix those first things onmy list, since they are cold, with gold, wine, mint, saf-fron, cinnamon and doronicum; remember too thatthe lamb, the peacock, the eagle, and the young bul-lock are Jovial animals.But how the power of Venus may be attracted by

turtle-doves, pigeons, white water wag-tails, and therest, modesty forbids me to reveal.

The Matheson TrustFor the Study of Comparative Religion