and if it is the basis of the judgment, this is causal reasoning. For when knowledge, intentions, and the informative and requestive utterances that express them are general, comprehensive, and universal, they encompass everything sought, leaving nothing that one seeks to know outside their scope. They also encompass every purpose of informative speech, leaving nothing that one seeks to intend outside their scope. This, however, is knowledge and intention concerning the things themselves, whether simple or composite.

Two causes must then be associated with them: the first is the cause, namely the efficient cause; the second is the underlying wisdom, namely the final cause. This is knowledge and intention concerning primary matters. The cause and agent are more indicative in the realm of concrete existence, while the wisdom and end are more indicative in the realm of knowledge and will. Hence the final cause is an efficient cause of the efficient cause. It is, in fact, the cause of causes, because it precedes them in knowledge and intention; because it may have no need of the effect, whereas the effect cannot dispense with it; because the agent acts only by virtue of it; and because it is the perfection and completion of existence.

For this reason, it is given precedence in His words:

“You alone we worship, and You alone we ask for help.”

Thus, when the wise sayings that express knowledge and requests contain both beginnings and endings, they bring together the two kinds of primary causes. And when they are comprehensive, they constitute a general cause.