“The potential or dark principle, is contrary and opposite in his essential property, unto the actual emanation of light beginning, so also have each of them manifested, or brought forth into this world, two offsprings, or essential properties, which are oppugnant in condition, and flat adversaries in their nature unto one another; and the two active virtues are Cold and Heat. . . . For the property of the dark nothing, or deformed abyss, is naturally to rest, and not to act or operate; and the reason is, because that its appetite is to be conversant in and about the center, beyond the which there is no motion or action, and not to dilate itself towards the circumference, as the spirit of light, or god in his volunty, or patent nature, is accustomed to do. For this reason, the dark principle doth challenge unto itself, by a natural instinct, rest and quietness, and this property begetteth or produceth one essential virtue of its own condition, namely, cold, the which, as it is elected as a champion to resist the assaults of her opposite, namely of Heat, whose comparisons are motion or action; . . . so unless it be roused or stirred up by the assaults of Heat, it moveth not, but seemeth to wait upon its drowsy mother, Darkness and privation, whose children are fixation and rest, which sleep in and cleave fast unto the center, and therefore are unwilling to look forth towards the circumference. And in verity, cold is an essential act, proceeding from, and attending on, the divine puissance, which in this property doth contract its beams from the circumference into its self.”

— Robert Fludd (c.1620), Publication; cited by Arthur Lovejoy (1933) in The Great Chain of Being (pg. 94) [2]