position.
Some define existence as the expression of reality or being and
nonexistence as nonbeing, imagining that death is annihilation. This is a
mistaken idea, for total annihilation is an impossibility. At most,
composition is ever subject to decomposition or disintegration--that is to
say, existence implies the grouping of material elements in a form or
body, and nonexistence is simply the decomposing of these groupings. This
is the law of creation in its endless forms and infinite variety of
expression. Certain elements have formed the composite creature man. This
composite association of the elements in the form of a human body is,
therefore, subject to disintegration, which we call death, but after
disintegration the elements themselves persist unchanged. Therefore, total
annihilation is an impossibility, and existence can never become
nonexistence. This would be equivalent to saying that light can become
darkness, which is manifestly untrue and impossible. As existence can
never become nonexistence, there is no death for man; nay, rather, man is
everlasting and ever-living. The rational proof of this is that the atoms
of the material elements are transferable from one form of existence to
another, from one degree and kingdom to another, lower or higher. For
example, an atom of the soil or dust of earth may traverse the kingdoms
from mineral to man by successive incorporations into the bodies of the
organisms of those kingdoms. At one time it enters into the formation of
the mineral or rock; it is then absorbed by the vegetable kingdom and
becomes a constituent of the body and fibre of a tree; again it is
appropriated by the animal, and at a still later period is found in the
body of man. Throughout these degrees of its traversing the kingdoms from
one form of phenomenal being to another, it retains its atomic existence
and is never annihilated nor relegated to nonexistence.

Nonexistence, therefore, is an expression applied to change of form, but
this transformation can never be rightly considered annihilation, for the
elements of composition are ever present and existent as we have seen in
the journey of the atom through successive kingdoms, unimpaired; hence,
there is no death; life is everlasting. So to speak, when the atom entered
into the composition of the tree, it died to the mineral kingdom, and when
consumed by the animal, it died to the vegetable kingdom, and so on until
its transference or transmutati