“When native substance outweighs refinement, one becomes rough; when refinement outweighs substance, one becomes hollowly ornate. Only when the two are properly combined does one become a cultivated person.” The sentence is from the Yong Ye chapter of the Analects. Here, substance means one's underlying character and reality, while form means learned manners and cultural refinement. Their balance is not a mechanical fifty-fifty division. Each restrains the other's excess.
Today, this need not become a slogan about the importance of presentation. Content that refuses all form may fail to be understood accurately; polished expression without substance can conceal an absence. A sounder test is whether form allows the underlying reality to appear, rather than replacing it.
https://ctext.org/text.pl?if=gb&node=1238
https://dict.idioms.moe.edu.tw/idiomView.jsp?ID=-624
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