 The worry, according to Suárez is that the final cause perhaps has no “real being” (esse reale), in which case it could not enter into any kind of causal relation. In so speaking, he is not just saying in a colorful way that perhaps the final cause does not exist, but rather that it is perhaps a mere fictum, that possibly all of our appeals to final causation are merely convenient fictions, able in principle to be replaced by appeals to other kinds of cause, those with real being, like efficient causes. If Ponce de León travelled to Florida in order to find the Fountain of Youth, that is well and good; but the Fountain of Youth does not exist—it has no esse reale—and so it hardly caused him to do anything at all.