OCCULT CHEMISTRY.

CHAPTER I.

A PRELIMINARY SURVEY.

The deep interest and importance of the research which this book describes
will best be appreciated if introduced by an account of the circumstances
out of which it arose. The first edition, consisting mainly of articles
reprinted from the _Theosophist_, dealt at once with the later phases of
the research in a way which, though intelligible to the occult student,
must have been rather bewildering to the ordinary reader. These later
phases, however, endow the earlier results with a significance that in the
beginning could only be vaguely conjectured. I am the better entitled to
perform the task that has been assigned to me--that of preparing the
present edition--by reason of the fact that it was in my presence and at my
instigation that the first efforts were made to penetrate the mystery
previously enshrouding the ultimate molecule of matter.

I remember the occasion vividly. Mr. Leadbeater was then staying at my
house, and his clairvoyant faculties were frequently exercised for the
benefit of myself, my wife and the theosophical friends around us. I had
discovered that these faculties, exercised in the appropriate direction,
were ultra-microscopic in their power. It occurred to me once to ask Mr.
Leadbeater if he thought he could actually _see_ a molecule of physical
matter. He was quite willing to try, and I suggested a molecule of gold as
one which he might try to observe. He made the appropriate effort, and
emerged from it saying the molecule in question was far too elaborate a
structure to be described. It evidently consisted of an enormous number of
some smaller atoms, quite too many to count; quite too complicated in their