Proximate Cause and Parallelism

As has been previously discussed, a significant distinction between the Aristotelian concept of Material Cause, and Spinoza's, as it is incorporated into his concept of Proximate Causality, is that the former is given, while the latter is produced.  Accordingly, there is a significant distinction between the two concepts of the relation between the Material Cause and the Formal Cause.  According to Aristotle, the Formal Cause imposes shape on inert Matter, whereas according to Spinoza, the Formal Cause shapes the production of the Material Cause.  In Spinoza's example of the drawing of a Circle according to a definition, the definition is the Formal Cause of the production of ink on a piece of paper.  Similarly, a singer both produces sounds and shapes them into notes.  The potentially significant implication for Spinoza's doctrine is the Parallel processes between Mind, expressed in the sequence of producing the Formal Cause, and Body, expressed in the sequence of the production of the Material Cause.  In other words, his concept of Proximate Cause illustrates his Parallelism, and suggests that Mind and Body are related as Form and Matter, which they are for Aristotle, but with a significant variation.