The Collaborative International Dictionary
Cause \Cause\ (k[add]z), n. [F. cause, fr. L. causa. Cf. Cause, v., Kickshaw.]
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That which produces or effects a result; that from which anything proceeds, and without which it would not exist.
Cause is substance exerting its power into act, to make one thing begin to be.
--Locke. That which is the occasion of an action or state; ground; reason; motive; as, cause for rejoicing.
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Sake; interest; advantage. [Obs.]
I did it not for his cause.
--2 Cor. vii. 12. (Law) A suit or action in court; any legal process by which a party endeavors to obtain his claim, or what he regards as his right; case; ground of action.
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Any subject of discussion or debate; matter; question; affair in general.
What counsel give you in this weighty cause!
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The side of a question, which is espoused, advocated, and upheld by a person or party; a principle which is advocated; that which a person or party seeks to attain.
God befriend us, as our cause is just.
--Shak.The part they take against me is from zeal to the cause.
--Burke.Efficient cause, the agent or force that produces a change or result.
Final cause, the end, design, or object, for which anything is done.
Formal cause, the elements of a conception which make the conception or the thing conceived to be what it is; or the idea viewed as a formative principle and co["o]perating with the matter.
Material cause, that of which anything is made.
Proximate cause. See under Proximate.
To make common cause with, to join with in purposes and aims.
--Macaulay.Syn: Origin; source; mainspring; motive; reason; incitement; inducement; purpose; object; suit; action.
Wiktionary
n. (context philosophy natural science English) The being or event which physically bring about the change or motion that produces another occurrence or thing.
Usage examples of "efficient cause".
How, then, can a good thing be the efficient cause of an evil will?
For instance, if, in the course of a tramp in the mountains, you find an inn just when your thirst has become unendurable, the efficient cause of the inn is the actions of the bricklayers that built it, while its final cause is the satisfaction of your thirst.
The lower realm, or Yin, Form II of Parmenides, is mechanical, driven by blind, efficient cause, deterministic and without intelligence, since it emanates from a dead source.
This is a little like Aristotle, who spoke of proximal cause and efficient cause.
And if the pretended reformers of the doctrine of physical influence represent, according to the ordinary views of transcendental dualism, matter, as such, as a thing by itself (not simply as a mere phenomenal appearance of an unknown thing), and then proceed in their objections to show that such an external object, which shows no causality but that of movements, can never be the efficient cause of representations, but that a third being must intervene in order to produce, if not reciprocal action, at least correspondence and harmony between the two, they would really begin their refutation.
But I did not mention the efficient cause because I did not perceive it until today, though it should have been evident enough from his intense application to Astruc, Booerhaave, Lind, Hunter and what few other authorities on the venereal distemper we possess (we lack both Locker and van Swieten), and even more from his curiously persistent eager detailed enquiries about the possibility of infection from using the same seat of ease, drinking from the same cup, kissing, toying and the like.
That same mysterious energy which we call gravitational when it steers the planets and biochemical when it heals a body is the efficient cause of all recoveries, and if God exists, that energy, directly or indirectly, is His.
He was chiefly occupied with the principle of causality, and remarked quite rightly, that the truth of this principle (and even the objective validity of the concept of an efficient cause in general) was based on no knowledge, i.
Meanwhile, the Emir had no small difficulty in assuaging the despair of Ghulendi Begum, and often cursed the hieroglyphics which had been its first efficient cause.
Or we may speak of the macrocosm, or great world, as the Grand Man, and we may say that the Soul of this Grand Man, the self-existent, substantial, and efficient cause of all things, at once immanent within yet transcending all things, is God.