3 Form is not an external something that things copy, nor that which produces from within a thing. Rather, forms are the mind's a priori organization of our sensory experience. Such forms as space, time, cause, and effect are presupposed in our experience and make that experience intelligible. Without forms, there could be no understanding. Finally, the phenomenology of Husserl 4 has been especially concerned about the essence of things, that without which a thing would not be what it is.
Essences are phenomena that are the necessary and invariant aspects of things.
This involves varying counterexamples and imagining whether a thing would still be itself without certain aspects. For one who is trying to avoid distinctions, I have certainly introduced enough of them. Throughout this and subsequent volumes, however, their usefulness will repay attention to their meanings. An actual tendency or inclination to become manifest, exemplified by words ending in able such as lovable, perishable, readable, reliable. The actual, active ability or capacity to produce some manifestation.