  Natural minima were presumed by the scholastics to owe their being both to matter and form in standard Aristotelian fashion. A key problem they struggled with concerned the relation of the form characteristic of the minima of combining substances and the form of the minima of the resulting compound. Natural minima of copper and tin cannot remain as such in the minima of bronze otherwise the properties of copper and tin would persist in bronze. On the other hand, the form of copper and tin must persist in some way to account for the fact that those metals can be recovered. A common scholastic response was to presume that the forms of the combining minima persist in the minima of the resulting compound but in a way that is subservient to the form of those latter minima. Elements persist in the compound somewhat as individual notes persist in a chord.