To get at the ideas of Leibniz, therefore, we cannot do better than follow the course of this discussion. He begins by saying that both space and time are purely relative, one being the order of co-existences, the other of successions. Space characterizes in terms of possibility an order of things existing at the same time, so far as they exist in mutual relations (_ensemble_), without regard to their special modes of existence. As to the alternate doctrine that space is a substance, or something absolute, it contradicts the principle of sufficient reason. Were space something absolutely uniform, without things placed in it, there would be no difference between one part and another, and it would be a matter of utter indifference to God why he gave bodies certain positions in space rather than others; similarly it would be a matter of indifference why he created the world when he did, if time were something independent of events. In other words, the supposed absoluteness of space and time would render the action of God wholly without reason, capricious, and at haphazard. Similarly, it contradicts the principle of "indiscernibles," by which Leibniz means the principle of specification, or distinction. According to him, to suppose two things exactly alike, is simply to imagine the same thing twice. Absolute uniformity, wholly undifferentiated, is a fiction impossible to realize in thought. "Space considered without objects has nothing in it to determine it; it is accordingly nothing actual. The parts of space must be determined and distinguished by the objects which are in them." Finally, were space and time absolutely real things in themselves, they would be independent of God, and even limitations upon him. "They would be more substantial than substances. God would not be able to change or destroy them. They would be immutable and eternal in every part. Thus there would be an infinity of eternal things (these parts) independent of God." They would limit God because he would be obliged to exist _in_ them. Only by existing through this independent time would he be eternal; only by extending through this independent space would he be omnipresent. Space and time thus become gods themselves.