Dialogus inter Deum et animam theologicus
“A theological dialogue between
God and the soul”
by marsilio ficino, 1470-1480
Marsilio Ficino to Michele Mercati of San Miniato, his beloved fellow philosopher: greetings
WE have often talked together of moral and natural philosophy, beloved Michele, and even more often of divine philosophy. I remember you used to say again and again that morals! are developed through practice, natural things discovered by reason and the divine begged of God by prayer. I have also read in the works of our Plato that the divine is revealed through purity of living rather than taught by verbal instruction. When I seriously considered these things I sometimes began to feel sick at heart, for I had already come to distrust reason but still lacked faith in revelation. From this there arose an intimate conversation between the soul and God. Listen to this, if you please, although I think you may already be nearer to speaking with God than I.
God: Why do you grieve so much, my unhappy soul? O my daughter, weep no more. Behold, I, your father, am here with you. Iam here, your cure and your salvation.
Soul: Oh that my father would enter into me. If I believed such a grace could befall me, ah! I should go mad with joy. As it is, I do not see how that can come about; for if, as I thought, the creator of the world created me, his offspring, nearer to himself than his own created world, he who is only outside me is not my highest father. Nor could he who was only within me be my father, for my father is certainly greater than I, yet he who is contained in me must be smaller. But I do not know how anything can be both inside me and outside me at the same time. What sorely distresses me, stranger, whoever you may be, is this: that I do not wish to live without my father, yet despair of being able to find him.
God: Put an end to your tears, my daughter, and do not torment yourself; it is no stranger who speaks to you but one who is your very own, more familiar to you than you are to yourself. Indeed, I am both with you and within you. I am indeed with you, because I am in you; I am in you, because you are in me. If you were not in me you would not be in yourself, indeed you would not be at all. Dry those tears, my daughter, and look upon your father. Your father is the least of all things in size, just as he is the greatest of all things in excellence; and since he is very small he is within every thing, but since he is very great he is outside everything. See, I am here with you, both within and without, the greatest smallness and the smallest greatness. Behold, I say, do you not see? I fill heaven and earth, I penetrate and contain them. I fill and am not filled, for Iam fulness itself. I penetrate and am not penetrated, for I am the power of penetration itself. I contain and am not contained, for I am containing itself. I, who am fulness itself, am not filled, for that would not be worthy of me. Iam not penetrated lest I cease to exist, being myself existence. I am not contained lest I cease to be God, who am infinity itself. Behold, do you not sce ? I pass into everything unmingled, so that I may surpass all; for Iam excellence itself. I excel everything without being separate, so that I am also able to enter and permeate at the same time, to enter completely and to make one, being unity itself, through which all things are made and endure, and which all things seek.
Why do you despair of finding your father, O foolish one? It is not difficult to find the place where I am; for in me are all things, out of me come all things and by me are all things sustained forever and every where. And with infinite power? I expand through infinite space. Indeed no place can be found where I am not; this very ‘where’ surely exists through me and is called ‘everywhere’. Whatever anyone does anywhere, he does through my guidance and my light. Whatever anyone seeks anywhere, he seeks through my guidance and my light. There is no desiring anywhere, except for the good; there is no finding anywhere, except of the truth. I am all good; I am all truth. Seek my face and you shall live. But do not move in order to touch me, for I am stillness itself. Do not be drawn in many directions in order to take hold of me; I am unity itself. Stop the movement, unify diversity, and you will surely reach me, who long ago reached you.
SOUL: How quickly you leave me, O my comforter! Why do you so suddenly leave your daughter thirsting like this? Go on, say more, continue I beg you, venerable deity. By your divine majesty, if it please you, I pray you speak more plainly. Oh may it please you! And because I know it will, tell me more plainly then what you, who are my father, are not, that I may be restored to life; and, O my father, tell me again what you are, so that I may live.
God: Your father is not of a physical nature, my daughter. The more you obey your father the better you are, and the more you resist the body the finer you are. It is good for you to be with your father, bad for you to be with your body. It was not some mind? that fathered you, O soul; otherwise you would contemplate nothing beyond mind and you would be held in that same changing mind, and not seek an unchanging nature. It was no intellect of many parts that made you, for then you would not attain complete simplicity, and the possession of intellect itself would be sufficient for you; but as it is, you ascend by understanding and love beyond any kind of intellect, to life itself, pure existence, absolute being. And understanding is not sufficient for you unless you not only understand well, but understand good itself. Without doubt only the good itself is sufficient for you, for the only reason you seek anything is because it is good.
Therefore, O soul, good is your creator; not the good body, not the good mind, not the good intellect, but good itself. Good is that which is indeed self-sufficient, infinite beyond the limits of what is beneath it, and it bestows on you infinite life, either from age to age, or at least from some beginning to the end of time. Do you desire to look on the face of good ? Then look around at the whole universe, full of the light of the sun. Look at the light in the material world, full of all forms in constant movement; take away the matter, leave the rest. You have the soul, an incorporeal light that takes all shapes and is full of change. Once again, take from this the changeability, and now you have reached the intelligence of the angels, the incorporeal light, taking all shapes but unchanging. Take away from this that diversity by which any form differs from the light,? and which is infused into the light from elsewhere, and then the essence of the light and of each form? is the same; the light gives form to itself and through its own forms gives form to everything. That light lights without limit, because it lights by its own nature and is not stained by mixture with something else. Nor can it diminish; belonging to nothing, it shines equally through all. Its life is selfdependent, and it confers life on all, seeing that its very shadow is the light of this sun. It alone gives life to the incorporeal. It perceives everything and bestows perception, since its shadow awakens all the senses for all creatures. Finally it loves each single thing, for each single thing is especially its own.
What then is the light of the sun ? It is the shadow of God. So what is God ? God is the sun of the sun; the light of the sun is God in the physical world, and God is the light of the sun above the intelligences of the angels. My shadow is such, O soul, that it is the most beautiful of all physical things. What do you suppose is the nature of my light? If this is the glory of my shadow, how much greater is the glory of my light:$ Do you love the light everywhere above all else? Indeed, do you love the light alone ? Love only me, O soul, alone the infinite light; love me, the light, boundlessly, I say; then you will shine and be infinitely delighted.
Soul: Oh wonder, surpassing’ wonder itself! What strange fire consumes me now ? What new sun is this, and whence does it shine upon me? What is this spirit, so powerful and so sweet, which at this moment pierces and soothes my inmost heart? Whence does it come? It bites and licks, goads and tickles. What bitter sweetness is this? Who could think it? This bitter sweetness melts me through and through and disembowels me. After this even the sweetest things seem bitter to me. What sweet bitterness it is which joins together my torn fragments, making me one again, by which even the most bitter is made sweet to me ? How irresistible is this will! I cannot but desire the good itself; I may avoid or postpone anything else, but not this longing for the good. How freely chosen is this necessity; for if I want to avoid it, I shall try to do so only because I think the avoidance itself is good. Nothing is more freely chosen than the good; because of it I desire all things; no, rather it is good which I desire in all things everywhere, and desire in such a way that I do not even wish to be capable of not desiring it. Who would think it? How full of life is that death by which I die in myself but live in God, by which I die to the dead but live for life, and live by life and rejoice in joy! Oh pleasure beyond sense! Oh delight beyond mind!* Oh joy beyond understanding! I am now out of my mind, but not mindless, because Iam beyond mind. Again Iam ina frenzy, all too great a frenzy; yet I do not fall to the ground; Iam borne upward. Now I expand in every direction® and overflow but am not dispersed, because God, the unity of unities, brings me to myself,’ because he makes me live with himself. Therefore now rejoice with me, all you whose rejoicing is God. My God has come to me, the God of the universe has embraced me. The God of gods even now enters my inmost being. Now indeed God himself nourishes me wholly, and he who created me recreates me. He who brought forth the soul, transforms it into angel, turns it into God. How shall I give thanks to you, O grace of graces? Teach me yourself, O grace of graces; I pray you teach me and be my guide. May that grace be to you which is your very self, O God.
By Marsilio Ficino, 1470-1480