Thus, for Locke, the "Notion of pure Substance in general"...

Thus, for Locke, the "Notion of pure Substance in general" is nothing but the assumption of an unknown support for a group of qualities that produce simple ideas in us; our only notion of this putative "substratum" in itself is the confused notion of "that which" has these features, or "something, I know not what." [Essay II xxiii 1-3] Locke consistently ridiculed the use of such scholastic terms as "Inhaerentia" and "Substantia" as pointlessly circular efforts to provide a positive idea of something for which, in fact, "we have no Idea of what it is, but only a confused obscure one of what it does." From this, he supposed, we can infer little of the metaphysical nature…