 This passage can be read to mean that speaking of a substance’s representation acting (as an efficient cause) is only a loose way of speaking; strictly speaking, it is the substance, or better, power of the substance, that acts in accordance with this representation (presumably functioning as a final cause). More on this issue in the section on final causation, but the main point is that textually it is difficult to know whether or not Leibniz takes perceptions or perceptual states to be efficient causes. Of course, all of the texts adduced up to this point could accommodate the view that for Leibniz perceptions or perceptual states function as efficient causes, for while the terms ‘consequence’ and ‘derivantur’, for instance, do not entail efficient causation, they are still compatible with it.