Da'as Tevunos - Section 114

Said the Intellect - When we say that the Holy One blessed is He created this world, certainly we will first understand the general creation and afterwards the details, meaning, at first nature itself, and afterwards its personalities [the objects of creation]. And when the Master may He be blessed wanted to innovate nature with good and negativity, it is certain that G-dly emanation came from him to innovate the existence of the nature, and this is goodness; and this is the G-dly emanation itself - a portion of it was absent, that is, the preparation of good that was within it, and a condition of its completion was that the nature was made with the aspect of goodness. And it is that the existence of this absence was that which innovated in nature the deficiencies in the existence of good, which is the generality of negativity. And this, that nature is certainly damaged by that which is not maintained by the G-dly emanation for it. And after innovating these two matters in general nature, then the personalities [objects of creation] were made in detail, some according to the matters of goodness according to the matters of negativity. And indeed the existence of the personalities were also certainly made with G-dly emanation, for we already established the first foundation that there is nothing made except through G-dly emanation. And perhaps this G-dly emanation is the G-dly emanation which comes after the G-dly emanation which we mentioned, that innovated with general existence being and loss, and therefore has in its rules to take from the generality of nature for the purpose of making the personalities which are needed to compose them from the good and from the negative which has been innovated already:

And nevertheless you will see that I am not saying that the G-dly emanation was nullified entirely, for then all of the existent beings would certainly be nullified, and this is the absence that I said could not cause existence, but the matter is that it was only nullified in part, that it is its preparation and rectification that are nullified. And this is like the matter that reaches a person that becomes ill but does not die, so is the general existence of the nature which is damaged with the removal of some G-dly emanation, and not entirely, and negativity is innovated which is non other than damage to the existence of nature in its perfection. And that which is set before us is eternally existent - that the Holy One blessed is he does not do other than goodness, and negativity is not made by Him, rather it is born from the absence of His G-dly emanation: