ABSTRACT
According to the Common Western Metaphysic, the World contains many individual things. Each human being, each living thing, each star, each atom, each building, is an individual thing. Many metaphysicians who have held that the World consists of individual things have also held that the World is a mere collection of individual things. The chapter offers Monism as the thesis that there is a single individual thing and that, moreover, this thing could not possibly have coexisted with any other individual thing. Metaphysicians who reject the thesis that there are many individual things are either Nihilists or Monists. It seems reasonable to adopt the convention that any member of a chain of mere modifications, however long, that terminates in an individual thing is itself a mere modification of that individual thing. A thing is not an individual thing if it is a “universal,” a universal being a thing that can have “instances.”
