"This is how the Stoics viewed the cosmic position of fire: "This warm and fiery essence is so poured out in all nature that in it inheres the power of procreation and the cause of becoming"... to them it is a "rational fire," "the fiery Mind of the universe," the most truly divine element in the cosmos. But what to the Stoics is thus the bearer of cosmic Reason, to the Valentinians is with the same omnipresence in all creation the embodiment of Ignorance. Where Heraclitus speaks of "the everlasting fire," they speak of fire as "death and corruption" in all elements. Yet even they would agree that as far as cosmic "life" so-called and demiurgical "reason" so-called are concerned these are properly symbolized in fire, as indeed in many gnostic systems the is expressly called the god of the fire; but since that kind of "life" and of "reason" are in their nature death and ignorance, the agreement in effect amounts to a subtle caricature of the Heraclitean-Stoic doctrine. We observe here the transition to the conception of fire as the hellish element: as such we shall meet it in the "burning fire of darkness" which the Manichaeans regarded as one of the properties of "Matter.""