By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself: in

To elaborate these points in a Western philosophical context, first, the “basic stuff” of the scientific West came to be seen as substances (noun phrases), in which attributes inhere (auxiliary verbs) or which are active (transitive and intransitive verbs). Thus Heraclitus could ask how it was possible to step into the same river twice when all of its substance (water) was different. In attempting to get to the bottom of things, Descartes argued for two substances which share no predicates because they are absolutely distinct: body (that which is extended) and mind (that which thinks). But Cartesian efforts to account for how the two substances could interact were not persuasive to Descartes’ successors. Like Spinoza, Leibniz believed that substances could not, in fact, interact, but while the former concluded there could therefore only be a single substance (with many modes and attributes), the latter instead argued for an indefinitely large number of them. These individual substances, “monads,” could not causally affect each other, but could all dance to the same tune played in a preestablished harmony composed by God.

What is the “substance” of story?

"If my opinion that substance requires a true unity were founded only on a definition I had formulated in opposition to common usage, *then the dispute would be only one of words*. But besides the fact that most philosophers have taken the term in almost the same fashion, distinguishing between a unity in itself and an accidental unity, between substantial and accidental form, and between perfect and imperfect, natural and artificial mixtures, I take things to a much higher level, and setting aside the question of terminology, *I believe that where there are only beings by aggregation, there aren't any real beings*. For every being by aggregation presupposes beings endowed with real unity, because every being derives its reality only from the reality of those beings of which it is composed, so that it will not have any reality at all if each being of which it is composed is itself a being by aggregation, a being for which we must still seek further grounds for its reality, grounds which can never be found in this way, if we must always continue to seek for them. I agree, Sir, that there are only machines (that are often animated) in all of corporeal nature, but I do not agree that *there are only aggregates of substances, there must also be true substances from which all the aggregates result.

We must, then, necessarily come down to the atoms of Epicurus and Cordemoy (which are things you reject along with me), or else we must admit that we do not find any reality in bodies; or finally, we must recognize some substances that have a true unity. I have already said in another letter that the composite made up of the diamonds of the Grand Duke and of the Great Mogul can be called a pair of diamonds, but this is only a being of reason. And when they are brought closer to one another, it would be a being of the imagination or perception, that is to say, a phenomenon. For contact, common motion, and participation in a common plan have no effect on substantial unity. It i

"If my opinion that substance requires a true unity were founded only on a definition I had formulated in opposition to common usage, *then the dispute would be only one of words*. But besides the fact that most philosophers have taken the term in almost the same fashion, distinguishing between a unity in itself and an accidental unity, between substantial and accidental form, and between perfect and imperfect, natural and artificial mixtures, I take things to a much higher level, and setting aside the question of terminology, *I believe that where there are only beings by aggregation, there aren't any real beings*. For every being by aggregation presupposes beings endowed with real unity, because every being derives its reality only from the reality of those beings of which it is composed, so that it will not have any reality at all if each being of which it is composed is itself a being by aggregation, a being for which we must still seek further grounds for its reality, grounds which can never be found in this way, if we must always continue to seek for them. I agree, Sir, that there are only machines (that are often animated) in all of corporeal nature, but I do not agree that *there are only aggregates of substances, there must also be true substances from which all the aggregates result.
We must, then, necessarily come down to the atoms of Epicurus and Cordemoy (which are things you reject along with me), or else we must admit that we do not find any reality in bodies; or finally, we must recognize some substances that have a true unity. I have already said in another letter that the composite made up of the diamonds of the Grand Duke and of the Great Mogul can be called a pair of diamonds, but this is only a being of reason. And when they are brought closer to one another, it would be a being of the imagination or perception, that is to say, a phenomenon. For contact, common motion, and participation in a common plan have no effect on substantial unity. It is

there is Shadow and there is Substance, and this is the root of all things. Of Substance, there is only Amber, the real city, upon the real Earth, which contains everything. Of Shadow, there is an infinitude of things. Every possibility exists somewhere as a Shadow of the real.

What does one say to somebody who says: ‘Whatever the sum total of the elements I am composed of I am still one entity. Now one cause has only one effect. I have always been one single cause and I have therefore only ever had one effect to produce. My existence in time is therefore nothing more than a series of necessary effects’?

I don't really eliminate body, but reduce it to what it is. For I show that corporeal mass, which is thought to have something over and above simple substances, is not a substance, but a phenomenon resulting from simple substances, which alone have unity and absolute reality.

The notion of a thing is thus seen to be an abstraction, in which it is conceptually separated from its infinite background and substructure. Actually, however, a thing does not and could not exist apart from the context from which it has thus been conceptually abstracted. And therefore the world is not made by putting together the various “things” in it, but, rather, these things are only approximately what we find on analysis in certain contexts and under suitable conditions.

A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.

I thence concluded that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature consists only in thinking, and which, that it may exist, has need of no place, nor is dependent on any material thing; so that “ I,” that is to say, the mind by which I am what I am, is wholly distinct from the body, and is even more easily known than the latter, and is such, that although the latter were not, it would still continue to be all that it is.

By using the term 'thinking substance' in such sharp contrast to 'extended substance' [Descartes] was clearly implying that the various distinct forms appearing in thought do not have their existence in such an order of extension and separation (i.e., some kind of space), but rather in a different order, in which extension and separations have no fundamental significance.

The substance of story is the gap that splits open between what a human being expects to happen when he takes an action and what really does happen; the rift between expectation and result, probability and necessity.

In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions.