Meditations IX.25

Go straight to that which makes a thing what it is, its formative cause,³⁸ and, isolating it from the material, regard it so. Then mark off the utmost time for which the individual object so qualified is calculated to subsist.

• 38.To the Formative, or Efficient Cause, of things is due not only that they exist, but that they are what they are. To translate the words here literally by the quality of the Cause conveys no meaning. Compare vi. 3.