Like shadows which dim the reception of a brilliant light, other causal factors besides God are needed to explain the particular and limited form of being that turns up in each created thing. Here Albert’s metaphysics makes contact with the natural philosophical themes we looked at in Chapter 34. Each giraffe comes from its mother and father through a process whose details are known best to the giraffes themselves, and there is also a role for the heavenly bodies. But none of these lesser causes accounts for the sheer being of any created thing.
