"A sign is an objective cause, not the principal objective cause, but a sub- stitutive one, by reason of which a sign is said to be instrumental, not in- deed as if it were an instrument of an acting agent, but as it is a substitute for an object, not informing as a specifying form, but representing from outside what it represents." "An object in general ... consists in this, that it be something extrinsic, from which derives and upon which depends the intrinsic rationale and specific character of any capacity or act; and this is reduced to the category of an extrinsic formal cause not causing existence, but specification." "If therefore an end as end specifies, it takes on the rationale of an object, for the rationale of a specifying object is one thing, the rationale of a mov- ing end quite another. And thus specification pertains to the order of an extrinsic formal cause; the impetus of an end, to the finalization moving to produce a thing in being. But to move relative to the act of being and exis- tence is outside the order of specification."           JOHN POINSOT 1632A: 195/23-29, 166/4-10 & 177/8-178/7

"It seems a strange thing, when one comes to ponder over it, that a sign should leave its interpreter to supply a part of its meaning; but the expla- nation of the phenomenon lies in the fact that the entire universe—not merely the universe of existents, but all that wider universe, embracing the universe of existents as a part ... — ... is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs."           CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE 1905-1906: 5.448N.

"Hence the name of this type of causality is 'extrinsic formal causality'. It is formal causality because it specifies the ... relation, and it is extrinsic formal causality because the specifiers lie outside the ... relation." And they need not exist.           RALPH AUSTIN POWELL 1986: 297 & VIVA VOCE