And if they can thus make three distinct ideas of substance, what hinders why another may not make a fourth?
19.

Substance and accidents of little use in Philosophy.
They who first ran into the notion of ACCIDENTS, as a sort of real beings that needed something to inhere in, were forced to find out the word SUBSTANCE to support them.

Had the poor Indian philosopher (who imagined that the earth also wanted something to bear it up) but thought of this word substance, he needed not to have been at the trouble to find an elephant to support it, and a tortoise to support his elephant: the word substance would have done it effectually.

And he that inquired might have taken it for as good an answer from an Indian philosopher,--that substance, without knowing what it is, is that which supports the earth, as take it for a sufficient answer and good doctrine from our European philosophers,--that substance, without knowing what it is, is that which supports accidents.

So that of substance, we have no idea of what it is, but only a confused obscure one of what it does.
20.