Only a spiritual person can be influenced, and he by object through the intelligence as medium, and only he can be an efficient cause.
So then this Person, intuiting through his intelligence what is befitting his dignity, puts forth, in accordance therewith, his power; and is efficient cause.
I think the truth is, that nothing ever happened except in a natural way; that behind every effect has been an efficient cause, and that this wondrous procession of causes and effects has never been, and never will be, broken.
Every hope, every fear, every dream, every virtue, every crime, has behind it an efficient cause.
From this the transition is easy to the further doctrine, that Volition is the sole Efficient Cause of all phenomena.
If it proves any thing, it proves that volition must have an efficient cause; and when motive is taken to be that cause, it is taken to be the efficient cause of volition.
Will it be pretended, that this does not come up to his definition of an efficient cause, as that which brings something to pass by "a positive influence?
Now, the sense in which this maxim is here used is perfectly obvious; for nothing can begin to be without an efficient cause, by which it is brought into existence.
It has been held, and rightly, that the assumption of a Final Cause of each part of animals and plants is as inevitable as the assumption of an efficient cause of every event.
Creative will, as an efficient cause, would have moved within the moral sphere; but beyond, and into the outside world of men and things, its activity must have failed to penetrate.
Finally, for operative activity, there must be an efficient cause putting in movement the productive law, over and above its intelligent apprehension just presupposed.
But sanctity from which a sacrament is denominated, is not there taken as an efficient cause, but rather as a formal or a final cause.
Further, given an efficient cause, nothing else is required for producing the effect.
For to the Son of God Himself, who is said to have been conceived, He has a habitude of consubstantiality: while to His body He has the habitude of efficient cause.
Because medicine is an efficient cause of health, consequently whatever things are denominated from medicine are to be referred to some first active cause: so that a medicament implies a certain causality.
This seems to be what is meant by an “efficient cause.
Now the good which a man hopes to obtain, has the aspect of a final cause, while the help by which one hopes to obtain that good, has the character of an efficient cause.
Charity is called the form of the other virtues not as being their exemplar or their essential form, but rather by way of efficient cause, in so far as it sets the form on all, in the aforesaid manner.
And from this judgment I am unable to except the theory, that Volition is an Efficient Cause.
Empedocles certainly attained to the idea of an efficient cause, for he named as moving forces, harmony and discord, love and hate.
Since the Ideas have in them {273} no principle of motion, Plato's system contains no efficient cause.
But as his system developed he forgot about this, and used the Nous merely as a piece of mechanism to explain motion, thus letting it sink into nothing more than an efficient cause.
An efficient cause is more noble than its effect: but not a disposing cause.
Now a thing may be a cause of the object, either by way of efficient cause, or by way of material disposition.
Hence, the system of causation undergoes a signal transformation, and proves to be organized by Final Cause as its basis and root, instead of by Efficient Cause, or Originating Ground, as the earlier stages of thinking had always assumed.
Natural selection perhaps expresses the total result of the working of these five factors rather than being an efficient cause in itself, or at least constitutes the last term in a series of causes.
This conception of an efficient cause which, not moving itself, by its mere presence induces movement in that to which it is present, is of the highest importance in Aristotle's theology.
The above list will hopefully provide you with a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "efficient cause" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this group of words.
