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Marcilius Ficinus, the second father of the Platonic philosophy, lived in my house, and conversed with me as intimately as Anaxagoras with you.
The Arabian, whose ancient oracles are Avicenna, Rhazes, Albucazis; and its revivers are Chauliac and Lanfranc; and the Greek school, whose modern champions are Bessarion, Platinus, and Marsilius Ficinus, but whose pristine doctors were medicine's very oracles, Phoebus, Chiron, Aesculapius, and his sons Podalinus and Machaon, Pythagoras, Democritus, Praxagoras, who invented the arteries, and Dioctes, 'qui primus urinae animum dedit. All these taught orally.
Others again have filled themselves with a vain confidence, from reading of commentaries of these admirable interpreters, and have in a short time considered themselves superior to their masters. This was the case with Ficinus, Picus, Dr.
The most eminent of the patrons of learning were the Medici of Florence. Cosmo founded a library and a Platonic academy. All the writings of Plato were translated by one of that philosopher's admiring disciples, Marsilius Ficinus. Dictionaries and grammars, versions and commentaries, for instruction in classical learning, were multiplied.
All the which writers do no less confirm the whole eastern side of Asia to be compassed about with the sea; then Plato doth affirm in is Timaeus, under the name Atlantis, the West Indies to be an island, as in a special discourse thereof R. Eden writeth, agreeable unto the sentence of Proclus, Marsilius Ficinus, and others. Out of Plato it is gathered that America is an island.
Ficinus and Picus of Mirandola worked no deliverance, either for Italian morals or polity, at a time when such deliverance was needed bitterly enough. Neoplatonism was petted by luxurious and heathen popes, as an elegant play of the cultivated fancy, which could do their real power, their practical system, neither good nor harm.
Agassiz, before Linnaeus, before Aristotle, before Plato, Timaeus the Locrian spake; the original, together with the version we cite, is given with the Plato of Ficinus: "Duas esse rerum omnium causas: mentem quidem, earum quae ratione quadam nascuntur, et necessitatem, earum quae existunt vi quadam, secundum corporum potentias et faculitates.
I often sink forward on my huge old Marsilius Ficinus in a fit of laughter. I should say that there never was a vein of ridicule so rich, at the same time so delicate. It is superior to Voltaire's; nay, to Pascal's. Perhaps there are one or two passages in Cervantes, and one or two in Fielding, that might give a modern reader a notion of it. I have very nearly finished Livy.
Or by a more critical equation, and supposing the whole of love to be as ten to determine with Ficinus, 'How many parts of it the one, and how many the other; or whether it is all of it one great Devil, from head to tail, as Plato has taken upon him to pronounce; concerning which conceit of his, I shall not offer my opinion: but my opinion of Plato is this; that he appears, from this instance, to have been a man of much the same temper and way of reasoning with doctor Baynyard, who being a great enemy to blisters, as imagining that half a dozen of 'em at once, would draw a man as surely to his grave, as a herse and six rashly concluded, that the Devil himself was nothing in the world, but one great bouncing Cantharidis.
How many great men Nature is incessantly sending up out of night, to be his men, Platonists! the Alexandrians, a constellation of genius; the Elizabethans, not less; Sir Thomas More, Henry More, John Hales, John Smith, Lord Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, Ralph Cudworth, Sydenham, Thomas Taylor; Marcilius Ficinus, and Picus Mirandola. Calvinism is in his Phaedo: Christianity is in it.
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