 The reader seems invited in these passages (particularly in  [1]  and the first two sections of  [2])  to conceive of the relation between simples and composites in a straightforward and intuitive way. If you have a dozen eggs, for example, you must have twelve individual eggs. Trying to argue that one could have a dozen eggs without having any individual eggs seems a hopeless task indeed. The argument also initially lends itself to a kind of physical atomism. If one thinks that tables and chairs, for example, are collections of indivisible physical atoms, then the argument is once again intuitive and difficult to deny. It becomes clear in the third section of text  [2]  that the relation between composite and simple cannot be quite this straightforward because the simples are not extended. Leibniz also makes this point in the section that follows  [1]  in the Principes de la Nature et de la Grace. But something like the intuitive picture remains. There are composites (bodies). Composites are collections of simples. If you put a bunch of simples together you get a composite. It is natural to think that the relation between simples and composites is understood on the model of part and whole. Simples are the parts that compose wholes (bodies).