  In the broadest sense, then, Ficino’s “academy” was not a specific place but a mindset; and as tempting as it is for moderns to fit Ficino into a Platonic “system” of philosophy (seen as in stark contrast to what is assumed to be an equally unitary “Aristotelian” system), doing so would be deeply anachronistic. Like almost all late ancient Platonists and high medieval thinkers, Ficino believed, for example, that one should start with Aristotle, just he himself had done. In the letter mentioned above, he listed, as an auditor, or student, a thinker named Francesco Cattani da Diacceto, whom Ficino eventually considered his successor. And in a letter written to that same Diacceto in July 1493, Ficino stated a classic position (for which see Gerson): that philosophy was such a broad enterprise that a division of labor was necessary, and that “whoever rightly understands that natural matters lead us to divine matters will realize that Peripatetic learning represents the way toward Platonic wisdom, so that it has come about that no one is ever admitted to the inner reaches of the Platonic mysteries without first having been initiated into the Peripatetic branches of learning” (Ficino 1576, 952). Truth was one, philosophy was broad in its scope, and for people to realize the truth and appreciate philosophy’s reach, they needed to be trained properly.