"No, no - you don't understand!" he sputtered, his face growing red not just with anger but with embarrassment, which seemed to make him angrier still. "Space is empty; it is a void in which the atoms move freely. There is no 'notbeing;' everything is in process of becoming. Everything is composed of atoms which are mobile and invisible, whirling in the void." "Then the void is a place within which this takes place, where all these invisible atoms are in - what did you say? - constant motion." "Yes, precisely," he replied, relieved to discover that I was not quite the dunce he had begun to fear I was. "The atoms move inside space, inside the void, creating through their combination everything that is." "Space, or void, then is not made up of atoms?" "No, because then there would be no place for them to move, as you yourself just pointed out." "I'm still not quite sure what you mean. Everything is in process of becoming - doesn't that mean that nothing is, that there is no being?" "No, because everything is always changing; everything that comes into being passes away." "But how can anything 'come into being,' if 'being' does not exist?" "We define things, put them in categories, but nothing is exactly what the definition says it is."