 Abelard maintains that everything in the world apart from God and angels is either form, matter, or a composite of form and matter. The matter of something is that out of which it is made, whether it persists in the finished product (as bricks in a house) or is absorbed into it (as flour in bread). Ultimately, all material objects are composed of the four elements earth, air, fire, and water, but they do not retain their elemental forms in most combinations. In general, the form of a material object just is the configuration of its material parts: “We call the form strictly what comes from the composition of the parts.” The form of a statue, for example, is its shape, which is no more than the arrangement of its matter—the curve of the nose, the size of the eyes, and so on. Forms are therefore supervenient on matter, and have no ontological standing independent of it. This is not to deny that forms exist, but to provide a particular explanation of what it is for a form to inhere in a given subject, namely for that subject to have its matter configured in a certain way. For example, the inherence of shape in the statue just is the way in which its bronze is arranged. Hence material things are identical with what they are made of—with one exception: human beings, whose forms are their immaterial (and immortal) souls. Strictly speaking, since human souls are capable of existence in separation form the body, they are not forms after all, though they act as substantial forms as long as they are joined to the body.