46 VITALISM AND SCHOLASTICISM 



were not shallow reasoners, as anyone who sets 

 himself to the study of their works will very 

 soon discover, and their line of argument was 

 perfectly definite and perfectly logical. Copper 

 they would argue consists of materia prima 

 and its appropriate form; so does gold consist 

 of materia prima and its appropriate form. 

 Why, since forms can change, may it not be 

 possible to cause copper to lose its own form 

 and assume that of gold and thus incidentally 

 enrich the experimenter? Modern physicists 

 tell us that gold is a knot in a string of ether; 

 copper is another kind of knot in the same 

 string. Why should it be impossible to untie 

 the latter and retie it as the former? In fact, 

 is not a good deal of modern research being 

 directed towards this very end; the discovery 

 of artificial methods of performing that very 

 operation of transmutation which it now ap- 

 pears that Nature to use that personification 

 for a moment is daily carrying out at least in 

 connection with the radio-active substances ? 



Returning to our subject, it may now be said 

 that the scholastics teach that in ^lafltsjthere 

 is a higher form of iiq^t^Jn^hhe^shape of the 

 Souls." vegetable form or soul (anima vegetativa) which 

 converts, so to speak, the plant from a col- 

 lection of chemical substances into an organic 

 unity. 



