The shortest entry in the book. One infinitive and three nouns. No imperative, no argument, no example: the technique is named and left as it stands — a sign that it is already worked in, and a reminder is enough.

τοιαῦτα … ὁρᾶν. Literally "to see things such" — that is, such as they are and not such as they appear. The whole content of the technique lies in that word: the analysis is not for the sake of knowledge but so that the thing should stop looking like something other than it is.

The triad. ὕλη is "matter, what it is made of"; αἴτιον is "the causal, what acts in it"; ἀναφορά is "the referring, what it is directed to." This is Stoic analysis in its school form, and in Book XII it appears three times: folded up here, in the checklist of 12.8 (which also has ἀναφοραὶ τῶν πράξεων), and unfolded in 12.18, where a fourth member is added to the three — χρόνος, the term within which the thing will have to cease. Cf. 3.11, where the same technique is described through ὅρος ἢ ὑπογραφή, "a definition or outline."

A note on Long's version. Long renders αἴτιον as "form" and ἀναφορά as "purpose." The first is a plain inaccuracy: for the Stoics the αἴτιον is not a form but the active principle; the Aristotelian "form" has nothing to do with it. Rogovin is more exact: "the causal principle" and "the end." The modernization restores cause and reference. The governing discipline is assent.