  The main idea is perhaps illustrated more intuitively by a helpful  example that Leibniz introduces in his Fifth Paper. There he suggests that space and time are analogous to a family tree. Unlike the  relationship between, say, a mighty oak and its leaves, a  genealogical tree is not something which exists as a thing  independently of, and prior to, its members, but is itself rather  something like an abstract system of relations holding between  brothers, sisters, parents, children, aunts, uncles, etc. Analogously for Leibniz, space and time are not to be thought of as containers in which bodies are literally located and through which they move, but  rather as an abstract structure of relations in which actual (and  even possible) bodies might be embedded. 