66 VITALISM AND SCHOLASTICISM 



plet, c'est done bien Pacte d'une puissance 

 encore en puissance."* 



Irritability In the second place if we watch the amoeba 

 we shall find that it is capable of responding 

 to certain stimuli, such as a touch, to which 

 it replies by contracting itself and by drawing 

 in any projections which it may have thrust out 

 from its body. This property of " irritability " 

 is one of the most remarkable which is pos- 

 sessed by living matter. It was defined by 

 Claude Bernard as being the property possessed 

 by the protoplasm of every anatomical element 

 of being stimulated to activity and of reacting 

 in one particular way to the external stimuli 

 to which it might be submitted. What happens 

 in this case of irritability is that some of the 

 internal energy of the amoeba is transformed 

 from the potential to the kinetic state and that 

 in " response to an action of itself inadequate 

 to produce it; and has been compared not in- 

 aptly to the discharge of a cannon, where foot- 



* This is not the place to discuss so large and complicated 

 subject, but it may here be mentioned that the whole 

 question of motion as related to living and not-living beings 

 requires restating in view of modern ideas of an ultra- 

 physical nature relating to the above and intra-atomic 

 activities and to molecular movement. In fact, as Pere de 

 Munnyck, O.P., seems to have been the first to point out, 

 (C.R. La congres scientific tenu a Fribourg, 1897 : Sciences 

 Philosophiques, p. 450), Hylomorphism must in various 

 ways be accommodated to these modern conceptions of the 

 above. 



