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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: PROTARCHUS: I understand.
SOCRATES: Still there was, as we said, a fourth class to be investigated,
and you must assist in the investigation; for does not everything which
comes into being, of necessity come into being through a cause?
PROTARCHUS: Yes, certainly; for how can there be anything which has no
cause?
SOCRATES: And is not the agent the same as the cause in all except name;
the agent and the cause may be rightly called one?
PROTARCHUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And the same may be said of the patient, or effect; we shall
find that they too differ, as I was saying, only in name--shall we not?
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