 The fifteen disputations in which Suárez explores these matters (DM XII–XXVII) consequently contain extended, intricate discussions of each of the four causes, as well as detailed explorations of how each cause effects its causality on a specific occasion. In general, he urges, a cause is a sort of origin or source (a principium). But what sort of source or origin? Not every source or origin qualifies as a cause (a journey from Athens to Jerusalem begins in Athens, but Athens is not the cause of this journey). Suárez notes that certain of his contemporaries sought to characterize the relevant sort of principle simply as that on which other things depend as such (DM XII 2.4: causa est id a quo aliquid per se  pendet);[12]  but he sets aside this formulation in favor of one which, if initially odder sounding, is more contentful and characteristic of the idiom within which he works. He thinks that a cause is the sort of principle that “in its own right imparts being to something else” (causa est principium per se influens esse in aliud: DM XII 2.4). One reason his approach sounds odd is that talk of one thing's “imparting being”, or perhaps even of one thing's “flowing being into” (influens esse) another thing, is initially hard to fathom. This fact does not escape Suárez, however. Indeed, he calls attention to this very word “flowing” (influens) and glosses it simply as “giving” or “communicating” being to another thing (dandi vel communicandi esse alteri). So at the most general level, a cause is the sort of principle or source which can impart being to another being—that is to say, then, that a cause is something that makes something exist or makes something already existing come to exist in a new and different way.