  Similarly, he shared much with Plotinus when it came to psychology, the study of the soul. The immortality of the human soul represented Ficino’s main preoccupation, fearing as he did the potential loss of belief among intellectual elites. He entitled the first chapter of his Platonic Theology accordingly: “Were the soul not immortal, no creature would be more miserable than man.” (Allen and Hankins 2001–06, 1.1, vol. 1, p. 14–15) The reason behind this statement is Ficino’s conception, shared with many other thinkers, that the human soul is endowed with a “natural appetite” that induces it, however haltingly and diversely (owing to its en-mattered state), to return to its divine origin (Kristeller 1988, 181; Ficino 1576, 1187). Ficino writes that “man alone never rests in his present habit of living: he alone is a pilgrim in these regions and cannot rest on the journey as long as he aspires to his celestial homeland, which all of us seek, although we proceed on sundry paths on account of the diversity of opinion and of judgment.” (Allen and Hankins 2001–06, 14.7, vol. 5, p.  272–73)