Crambe regretted extremely that _Substantial Forms_, a race of harmless beings which had lasted for many years and had afforded a comfortable subsistence to many poor philosophers, should now be hunted down like so many wolves, without the possibility of retreat. He considered that it had gone much harder with them than with the _Essences_, which had retired from the schools into the apothecaries' shops, where some of them had been advanced into the degree of _Quintessences_. He thought there should be a retreat for poor _substantial forms_ amongst the gentlemen-ushers at court; and that there were, indeed, substantial forms, such as forms of prayer and forms of government, without which the things themselves could never long subsist.... Metaphysics were a large field in which to exercise the weapons which logic had put in their hands. Here Martin and Crambe used to engage like any prizefighters. And as prize-fighters will agree to lay aside a buckler, or some such defensive weapon, so Crambe would agree not to use _simpliciter_ and _secundum quid_, if Martin would part with _materialiter_ and _formaliter_. But it was found, that, without the defensive armor of these distinctions, the arguments cut so deep that they fetched blood at every stroke. Their theses were picked out of Suarez, Thomas Aquinas, and other learned writers on those subjects.... One, particularly, remains undecided to this day,-- 'An praeter _esse_ reale actualis essentiae sit alind _esse_ necessarium quo res actualiter existat?' In English thus: 'Whether, besides the real being of actual being, there be any other being necessary to cause a thing to be?' [8] [Footnote 8: Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus. Chap. VII.]