  The second pillar of Leibniz’s positive account of space and time is  rooted in his view that – even understood as systems of  relations – space and time as “beings of reason”  are in a sense at least two steps removed from the monads of his  mature metaphysics. (i) Although bodies may be held to stand in  spatial and temporal relations to one another, Leibniz claims, space  and time themselves must be considered abstractions or idealizations  with respect to those relations. For while relations between bodies  and events are necessarily variable and changing, the relations  constituting space and time must be viewed as determinate, fixed, and ideal. (ii) As we have briefly noted, however, according to Leibniz’s most mature metaphysics, physical bodies and events are themselves to be understood as merely well-founded phenomena. Relations of relative distance and duration holding between bodies must therefore  themselves be a step removed from monadic reality, and thus space and time must be, as it were, a second step removed from the most basic  non-relational entities of Leibniz’s most mature metaphysics. In  spite of this double relation holding between ideal space and time on the one hand and monadic reality on the other, Leibniz nonetheless  insists that ideal space must be intelligibly related to the various  perceptions by which monads represent the world, each from its own  “point of view,” just as ideal time must be intelligibly  related to the various appetites in accordance with which monads  sequentially unfold in synchronized harmony. Although the details of  this intelligible grounding story remain less than perspicuous, there can be no doubt that Leibniz saw his relationalism about space and  time as dovetailing with the foundations of his monadic metaphysics.