  Intuitively, however, there isn't anything in the idea of a simple  that suggests that simples are necessary beings — especially  if, as combinatorialists generally agree, simples are physical things of some sort and simple universals are properties of, and relations  among, those things. For there is nothing in the nature of a simple  object to suggest that any given simple had to have existed.  Likewise, there is nothing in the nature of a simple universal to  suggest it had to have been exemplified and, hence, on the  combinatorialist's own conception of universals, that it had to  exist. Otherwise put, as simples exist only insofar as they are  constituents of facts, there seems no reason why there couldn't have  been a very small number of facts, indeed, just a single simple,  atomic, monadic fact and, hence, a lone simple object and a lone  simple universal. 