Space cannot be utterly devoid of objects if space cannot exist independently of objects at any given instant.

The view that space cannot exist independently of objects at any given instant does seem to entail that space cannot be utterly devoid of objects. Leibniz thinks that space is the order of the actual and possible relations among objects, so he has the resources to say that space can contain empty sectors—see New Essays, 127, and L 5: 43—but it seems he cannot claim that space is altogether empty, for then object relations would be absent. Yet this view seems perfectly compatible with the idea th