 Such remarks engendered a long dispute between those who favored this sort of “unitarian” approach and those who took one or another “pluralist” position. The pluralists argued that living things contain one substantial form for their body (their bodily form, forma corporeitatis) and at least one further distinct form, their soul, in virtue of which they have life (Adams 1987 ch. 15; Cross 1998 ch. 4; Pasnau 2011 ch. 25). The principal argument in favor of pluralism was that it explained how the body of a living thing could persist after the departure of the living thing’s soul at death. Aquinas and other unitarians claimed that such persistence was merely apparent, and that strictly speaking the only thing that endures through a substance’s corruption is prime matter.