THE SCHOLASTIC POSITION 43 



incidentally concerned in this book, it may be 

 said that each simple body or chemical com- 

 pound or whatever the non-living. jjbjp^t may 

 be, is regarded as a being endoged with sub- 

 stantial unity and consisting of the substrate- 

 matter with the appropriate determining fac- 

 tor-form. It may not be amiss for a moment to 

 consider how very closely this scholastic view of 

 matter, in the sense of Physics, not " Matter " 

 or materia prima of the Schoolmen, approxi- 

 mates to the theory upheld to-day by many 

 physicists. If, as they hold, all matter consists 

 of vortices or kinks in ether, so that it is all 

 modified ether existing in and interpenetrated 

 by unmodified ether the one being to the other Ether 

 like the knots in a piece of string, as Sir Oliver 

 Lodge puts it then their view is very nearly 

 that of scholasticism. Very nearly, but not 

 quite; for the physicists allow independent 

 existence to ether which the Thomists do not 

 allow to " Matter." Their predecessors did, 

 and their view is, therefore, practically indis- 

 tinguishable from that of many modern physi- 

 cists. According to modern Thomists, ether- 

 unmodified ether would have its own "Form," 

 \vhich would be changed for another " Form " 

 when and as it became modified. It is inter- 

 esting, even startling, to find these theories, 

 thought out centuries ago, which approximate 



