"As Leibniz was fond of saying, it is one and the same to be a thing and to be a thing. In other words the “really real” is free from otherness, because what we could ascribe to it as other than what it is would actually be “another being.” For the same reason, being as such is free from change. In a doctrine where to be is to be the same, otherness is the very negation of being. Thus in virtue of its self-identity, which forbids it to change unless indeed it ceased to be, true being is immutable in its own right. This permanency in self-identity is the chief mark of the “really real,” that is, of being."