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Full Idea
I understand matter as either secondary or primary. Secondary matter is, indeed, a complete substance, but it is not merely passive; primary matter is merely passive, but it is not a complete substance. So we must add a soul or form...
Gist of Idea
Secondary matter is active and complete; primary matter is passive and incomplete
Source
Gottfried Leibniz (On Nature Itself (De Ipsa Natura) [1698], §12), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4
Book Ref
Garber,Daniel: 'Leibniz: Body, Substance, Monad' [OUP 2009], p.142
A Reaction
It sounds as if primary matter is redundant, but Garber suggests that secondary matter is just the combination of primary matter with form.
| 13470 | Mass is central to matter [Newton, by Hart,WD] |
| 15978 | I take 'matter' to be a body, excluding its extension in space and its shape [Locke] |
| 12718 | Secondary matter is active and complete; primary matter is passive and incomplete [Leibniz] |
| 19416 | Not all of matter is animated, any more than a pond full of living fish is animated [Leibniz] |
| 19422 | Every particle of matter contains organic bodies [Leibniz] |
| 19436 | Bare or primary matter is passive; it is clothed or secondary matter which contains action [Leibniz] |
| 7560 | Leibniz struggled to reconcile bodies with a reality of purely soul-like entities [Jolley on Leibniz] |
| 6731 | No one can explain how matter affects mind, so matter is redundant in philosophy [Berkeley] |
| 14301 | We have no good concept of solidity or matter, because accounts of them are all circular [Hume] |
| 16603 | In the 17th C matter became body, and was then studied by science [Pasnau] |