The Summary of Physics Restored

45Those 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.