THE THREEFOLD MODE OF GIVING FORM TO FIRST MATTER.

Where, however, the powers of form and matter met in a just balance and equality, as in the formation of the ethereal heaven and celestial bodies, the action of light, mightiest of all in acting, advanced so far that by wonderfully illuminating and refining its matter it redeemed it from every original stain and the virulent wasting of corruption. This must be regarded as truly perfect formation.

Matter is said to be formed in the third mode where form remained less powerful, as has happened, though in various ways, in this elemental region of ours. Here matter's appetite, a sign of deficiency and imperfection, luxuriant and rebellious in its base and root, could not be sufficiently satisfied, nor its weakness healed, because of its remoteness and distance from the formal principle. Hence matter, not fully formed according to its desire, languishes with longing for a new form. When it finally obtains one, it brings it, as to a husband, a rich dowry of corruption and faults. Fretful, obstinate, rebellious and inconstant, it always burns for new couplings, greedy for every form and content with none: it desires them absent and hates them present.

From this it is clear that the ferment of alteration and corruption, and finally the fatal poison of death, comes to the elements and the compounds of this lowest region not from the opposition of qualities but from the infected womb and poisoned menstrual fluid of dark matter. Weak and insufficient form, not justly balanced in their first and radical union, could not purge this matter of its stain and imperfection. Scripture strengthens belief in this: we may observe there that our first parent was not created immortal in respect of his matter. To secure him against corruption and matter's original stain, God placed in paradise a tree abounding in the fruit of life, which he might use as a defender and deliverer against matter's instability and servitude to decay and death. After the fall and the pronouncement of the sentence of death, he was removed from its use and presence.

CORRUPTION DOES NOT PROCEED FROM THE CONTRARIETY OF QUALITIES.

There were therefore only two simple principles of nature in the beginning, with everything else later than them and nothing earlier: first matter and its universal form. From their coupling arose the elements as secondary principles, which are nothing other than first matter variously formed. From their mixture second matter is compounded, the immediate subject of accidents, undergoing the alternations of generation and corruption. These are the degrees and this the order of nature's principles.

Those who add a third principle of things to matter and form, namely privation, slander nature, whose intention is foreign to admitting a principle contrary to her own end. Since her end in generation is the attainment of form, which privation opposes, privation cannot belong to nature's intention. They would have spoken more truly had they recognised love as a principle of nature, for matter deprived of its former form burns with desire to attain a new one. Privation is nothing other than the mere absence of form, and therefore does not deserve the august name of a principle of nature. That name belongs far more to love, which mediates between what desires and what can be desired, between the beautiful and the formless, matter and form.

Corruption is far closer to being a principle of generation than privation, since it is a motion disposing matter for generation through successive degrees of alteration. Privation does nothing and carries out nothing in the work of generation, whereas corruption advances and prepares matter to make it capable of receiving form. Like a go-between it acts as a procurer, so that matter may more readily satisfy nature's lust and with its aid attain coupling with form. Corruption is therefore an instrumental and necessary cause of generation. Privation, however, is nothing other than the mere lack of an active and formal principle, and darkness upon the face of the abyss, namely formless and dark matter.

The universe's harmony consists in the varied and graduated formation of matter. The differences between the elements, and also between the world's regions, flowed from the proportioned mixture of first matter and its form. Hermes indicated this in few but most truthful words when he said that what is above is like what is below. For higher and lower things were made from the same matter and form but differ in their mixture, position and perfection; upon these turn the distinction of the world's parts and the whole range of nature.

THE HARMONY OF THE UNIVERSE.

We must believe that after receiving form from light and after the distinction of things, first matter passed wholly beyond itself, was transferred into the elements and the things compounded from them, and was entirely expended in completing the work of the universe. Thus, once the things formerly hidden within it were manifested and brought into light, it began to be hidden wholly within them; we must admit that it cannot exist separately from them.

Nature has left us a certain specimen of that ancient confused mass, or first matter, in a dry water that does not wet. Springing from the earth's cavities or even from lakes, it flows forth pregnant with the manifold seed of things, wholly volatile under even the slightest heat. Whoever knows how to draw out its inward elements once it is coupled with its male, skilfully separate them and join them again may boast that he has attained nature and art's most precious secret, indeed a compendium of heavenly essence.