 Viewed from one perspective, the essentialist’s picture can seem intuitive. When one rearranges the dining room furniture, one does not bring new furniture into existence—one simply brings existing furniture into a new arrangement. In the same way, rearranging the material contents of the universe does not bring new material objects into existence—it simply puts existing objects into new arrangements. Thus, when the artist sculpts the lump of clay she gives that object a new form, but does not create a new object. Viewed from another perspective, however, this picture seems completely absurd, for it implies that if we annihilate a single particle of David, the entire statue will be destroyed. More frightening still, if we annihilate a single particle from your body, then you will no longer exist. The mereological essentialist may reply that, if we were to annihilate a particle from David, there would still be a statue left in its place—call it David*. David* would not be identical to David, but it would be very similar. For example, it would have roughly the same mass, the same shape, and the same location. In Chisholm’s terminology, this would be a “statue-successor” of David, and the existence of this successor gives us a loose sense in which “the statue” survives. Here is a second worry for the essentialist, focusing on the idea that the whole is essential to the parts. Imagine that the artist who sculpted David becomes dissatisfied with her work and squashes the statue while preserving all the bits of clay. If the whole is essential to the parts, then it would follow that David (the thing that was previously composed of those parts) still exists. But this seems absurd—statues cannot survive being squashed. We get an equally absurd result in the opposite direction. David’s parts existed prior to the sculpting, so David itself existed prior to the sculpting. But how can a statue exist before it is sculpted? The eliminativist might reply that the thing which is (currently) a statue existed prior to the sculpting, but it was not (then) a statue. In this sense, at least, we can say that the statue did not exist prior to sculpting. Similarly, the thing which is (currently) a statue may survive being squashed, but it will not (then) be a statue. So, in that sense, the statue will not survive the squashing. (For more details on this paraphrasing strategy, see Chisholm 1976, chapter 3.)