At a later date in the life of the individual, by some unknown stimuli, they resume their active power of proliferation and so give rise to new growths.
Each natural substance is a formal cause, as being what it is; a material cause, as having passive power to be changed; an efficient cause, as having active power to change, by communicating the selfsame essence into different matter so as to produce therein a homogeneous effect in the same species; and a final cause, as an end to be realized.
Such are modes of quantity in space, and time and number, under which Locke reports that we find ourselves mentally impelled towards immensity, eternity and the innumerable - in a word, towards Infinity which seems to transcend quantity; then there is the complex thought of Substance, to which we find ourselves mysteriously impelled, when the simple phenomena of the senses come to be regarded as qualities of " something "; again there is the obscure idea of the identity of persons, notwithstanding their constant changes of state; and there is, above all, the inevitable tendency we somehow have to refund a change into what we call its " Cause," with the associated idea of active power.
Locke's thoughts about Causality and Active Power are especially noteworthy, for he rests our knowledge of God and of the external universe on those ultimate ideas.
Locke here unconsciously approaches the spiritual view of active power in the physical universe afterwards taken by Berkeley, forming the constructive principle of his philosophy.
