We have final causes, instrumental causes, occasional causes, predisposing causes, efficient causes, and many others.
The surrounding circumstances may be conditions, may be occasional causes, may be predisposing causes, but they are not, and cannot be, producing or efficient causes.
But this fact has never been denied: it has always been conceded, that we ascertain the existence of efficient causes, excepting the acts of our minds, only by means of the effects they produce.
How can it be free and independent in its acts, and yet under the dominion of efficient causes?
Nature is but an endless series of efficient causes.
The trouble is, that in the phenomena of mind we find the same endless chain of efficient causes; the same mechanical necessity.
In other words, evil is not the direct, natural or normal result of the activity of efficient causes; for this result is always good.
The agencies in nature which, by their activity, bring about change, are efficient causes.
It is undoubtedly due to the action of efficient causes, i.
As material causes, they supply the matter of which the fœtus will be formed; but, as efficient causes, they only put the conditions required by nature for the organization of this matter.
But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false.
In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes.
Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes.
It is true that in the academic philosophies of our time these final causes still figure very prominently; in the new philosophy of nature we can entirely replace them by efficient causes.
The monistic or mechanical philosophy of nature holds that only unconscious, necessary, efficient causes are at work in the whole field of nature, in organic life as well as in inorganic changes.
Recalling what was said in the tenth chapter of this book, we may observe that final causes form a series distinct from that of efficient causes; what in the latter is physical action, is in the former, moral influence.
In a painting, the series of efficient causes is the pencil, the hand, the muscles, the animal spirits, and the command of the will.
The above list will hopefully provide you with a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "efficient causes" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this group of words.
