And this is not
only evidently true of those effects which possess actual or
formal reality, but also of the ideas in which we consider
merely what is termed objective reality. To take an example,
the stone which has not yet existed not only cannot now
commence to be unless it has been produced by something which
possesses within itself, either formally or eminently, all
that enters into the composition of the stone [i.e. it must
possess the same things or other more excellent things than
those which exist in the stone] and heat can only be produced
in a subject in which it did not previously exist by a cause
that is of an order [degree or kind] at least as perfect as
heat, and so in all other cases. But further, the idea of
heat, or of a stone, cannot exist in me unless it has been
placed within me by some cause which possesses within it at
least as much reality as that which I conceive to exist in the
heat or the stone. For although this cause does not transmit
anything of its actual or formal reality to my idea, we must
not for that reason imagine that it is necessarily a less real
cause; we must remember that [since every idea is a work of
the mind] its nature is such that it demands of itself no
other formal reality than that which it borrows from my
thought, of which it is only a mode [i.
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