Final cause is generally employed at present to signify design.
For the expression "final cause" has various significations which are indeed intimately related, yet which cannot be employed indifferently without leading to utter confusion.
In this respect, therefore, he almost identifies God and the absolute final cause.
In this work, Leibnitz investigates the relation of God to the world in order to show a conformity in this relation to a final cause, and to free God from the charge of acting without or contrary to an aim.
While the former had made its prominent inquiry for moving causes, and had, indeed, often ridiculed the search for a final cause; it is final causes toward which the latter directs its chief aim.
The hypostatic union completes the first cycle or procession of existences from God as first cause, and initiates their return to him as final cause, as we have said in our remarks on Primeval Man.
Between God as final cause, and his creatures, the mediator is the Incarnate Word, or the man Christ Jesus, the only mediator between God and men.
We proceed from him as first cause, and return to him as final cause, as we have shown again and again in the magazine with all the necessary proofs.
The view of human nature became unsatisfactory just at the critical point--when we attempted to get at a knowledge of its end or final cause, which would give unity and purpose to action.
In defining the typical man, we must have no idea of final cause or purpose which is not rooted in the nature of his organism.
Sidenote: (b) no logical transition being effected from efficient to final cause.
Another form of final cause is seen in the actions of living creatures, which reveal a self-consciousness; a consciousness that even in its most obscure forms guides them toward a destined end.
The epigrammatic comparison of a Final Cause to a consecrated Virgin[66] has been reviewed by numberless disciples as well as critics of our author.
It has been held, and rightly[318], 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.
On the other hand, it seems to me that the following explanation of the nature of the flower from its final cause, suggested by an Italian whose name has escaped me, is a far more satisfactory account to give.
In fact, we cannot otherwise distinctly think a final cause except as an end in view, i.
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.
For capital vices denote those whence, under the aspect of final cause, other vices originate.
Nay, more; both necessity and the orderly achievement of a final cause may be conceived optimistically or pessimistically.
But what multitudes of raindrops fall back into the ocean--are as much without a final cause as the incipient varieties which come to nothing!
Is the proof of design or final cause in A and D, whatever it amounted to, at all weakened by the discovery of the intermediate forms?
Here, as in higher instances, confident as we are that there is a final cause, we must not be overconfident that we can infer the particular or true one.
In order to satisfy ourselves of the truth of a final cause, in any particular instance, it is necessary that the effect produced should be uniform and invariably in time and place.
When the effects are invariably the same in all times and places, and when these uniform effects are independent of the beings to which they attach, then there is visibly a final cause.
It corresponds to a certain extent with the modern conception of a law of nature, or of a final cause, or of both in one, and in this regard may be connected with the measure and symmetry of the Philebus.
They then cease to be hypotheses or pictures, and become essential parts of a higher truth which is at once their first principle and their final cause.
When mankind do not as yet know that the world is subject to law, the introduction of the mere conception of law or design or final cause, and the far-off anticipation of the harmony of knowledge, are great steps onward.
The above list will hopefully provide you with a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "final cause" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this group of words.
