The conceptual difficulty of bare particulars was illustrated by John Locke when he described a substance by itself, apart from its properties as "something, I know not what.
For example, bundle theory regards an apple as red, four inches (100 mm) wide, and juicy but lacking an underlying substance.
The apple is said to be a bundle of properties including redness, being four inches (100 mm) wide, and juiciness.
Hume used the term "bundle" in this sense, also referring to the personal identity, in his main work: "I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement".
Thus, it determines substancehood empirically by the togetherness of properties rather than by a bare particular or by any other non-empirical underlying strata.
The Indian Madhyamaka philosopher, Chandrakirti, used the aggregate nature of objects to demonstrate the lack of essence in what is known as the sevenfold reasoning.
In his work, Guide to the Middle Way (Sanskrit: Madhyamakāvatāra), he says: [The self] is like a cart, which is not other than its parts, not non-other, and does not possess them.