The Summary of Physics Restored

22The world-building spirit began the work of creation from two universal principles, one formal and the other material. For what else do the prophet's words mean—“In the beginning God created heaven and earth”, and so forth—than that, at the beginning of giving form to matter, God distinguished it into two supreme principles, namely the formal and material principles, heaven and earth? That the name earth means the dark mass of waters and abyss, not yet clothed in form, is shown by the following words: “The earth was empty and void, and darkness was upon the face of the abyss”, and so forth. The creator enclosed and bounded this mass within the highest heaven, the empyrean, which is nature's first formal principle, though a remote one.