Every statement about complexes can be analysed into a statement about their constituent parts, and into those propositions which completely describe the complexes.
Objects form the substance of the world. Therefore they cannot be compound.
If the world had no substance, then whether a proposition had sense would depend on whether another proposition was true.
It would then be impossible to form a picture of the world (true or false).
It is clear that however different from the real one an imagined world may be, it must have somethingā āa formā āin common with the real world.
This fixed form consists of the objects.
The substance of the world can only determine a form and not any material properties. For these are first presented by the propositionsā āfirst formed by the configuration of the objects.
Roughly speaking: objects are colourless.
Two objects of the same logical form areā āapart from their external propertiesā āonly differentiated from one another in that they are different.
Either a thing has properties which no other has, and then one can distinguish it straight away from the others by a description and refer to it; or, on the other hand, there are several things which have the totality of their properties in common, and then it is quite impossible to point to any one of them.
For if a thing is not distinguished by anything, I cannot distinguish itā āfor otherwise it would be distinguished.
Substance is what exists independently of what is the case.
It is form and content.