CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 239 



In this connection we must remember Kant's 

 dictum * that "if we seek the cause of any 

 change of matter whatever, in life, we shall have 

 to seek it at once in another substance, distinct 

 from matter, although bound up with it." 



" It is in meeting this difficulty," says Fr. 

 Maher,t " that the Scholastic conception of the 

 relation of Soul and Body in the theory of 

 Matter and Form is most helpful. In that Matter 

 theory the vital principle is the * form ' or de- and f orm 

 termining principle pf the living being. Coales- 

 cing with the material or passive factor, it con- 

 stitutes the living being. It gives itjts_sgecific 

 nature, it unifies the material elements into one 

 individual. It makes them, it constitutes them, 

 it holds them a living being of a certain kind. 

 Biology teaches us that the living organism is 

 a mass of chemical compounds, many in very 

 complex and unstable equilibrium. They are, 

 many of them, tending of themselves to dis- 

 solution into simpler and more stable sub- 

 stances, and when life ceases the process of dis- 

 integration sets in with great rapidity. The 

 function, then, of this active informing principle 

 is of a unifying, conserving, restraining char- 



* Metaphysische Anfangsgrunde der Naturwissenschaft, 

 ed. Hartenstein, vol. iv., s. 440. 



t Life and the Conservation of Energy in the Lower 

 Animals. My lamented friend, the author of this paper, 

 lent it to me in MS. I fear that it was never published. 



