Capítulo 4. Chapter IV.—Concerning Cause
[3.4.13] To prevent the Dogmatists attempting also to slander us,[343] because of their inability to refute us in a practical way, we shall discuss the question of the efficient Cause more at large when we have first tried to give attention to the conception of Cause. Now so far as the statements of the Dogmatists are concerned, it would be impossible for anyone even to conceive Cause, since, in addition to offering discrepant and contradictory conceptions of Cause, they have rendered its substance also indiscoverable by their disagreement about it.
[3.4.14] For some affirm Cause to be corporeal, others incorporeal.[344] In the broad sense, a Cause would seem to be, according to them, ‟That by whose energizing the effect comes about;”[345] as, for example, the sun or the sun’s heat is the cause of the wax being melted or of the melting of the wax. For even on this point they are at variance, some declaring that Cause is causal of nouns, such as ‟the melting,” others of predicates, such as ‟being melted.” Hence, as I said, in the broad sense Cause will be ‟that by whose energizing the effect comes about.”
[3.4.15] The majority of them hold that of these Causes some are immediate,[346] some associate, some co- operant; and that causes are ‟immediate” when their presence involves the presence, and their removal the removal, and their decrease the decrease, of the effect (it is thus, they say, that the fixing on of the halter causes the strangling); and that an ‟associate” cause is one which contributes a force equal to that of its fellow-cause towards the production of the effect (it is thus, they say, that each of the oxen which draw the plough is a cause of the drawing of the plough); and that a ‟co-operant” cause is one which contributes a slight force towards the easy production of the effect, as in the case when two men are lifting a heavy load with difficulty the assistance of a third helps to lighten it.
[3.4.16] Some of them, however, have asserted further that things present are causes of things future, being ‟antecedents;” as when intense exposure to the sun causes fever. But this view is rejected by some, on the ground that, since the Cause is relative to something existent and to a real effect, it cannot precede it as its cause.[347]
As regards this controversy, our position is as follows: