The Summary of Physics Restored

42Matter 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.