Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself.
Mary Shelley, from the Introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein.
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Mary Shelley
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The question of what is meant by “substance”, is rather more challenging than might be immediately apparent.