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CHAPTER II.

DETAILS OF THE EARLY RESEARCH.

The article detailing the results of the research carried on in the year
1895 (see the November issue for that year of the magazine then called
_Lucifer_), began with some general remarks about the clairvoyant faculty,
already discussed in the preceding chapter. The original record then goes
on as follows:--

The physical world is regarded as being composed of between sixty and
seventy chemical elements, aggregated into an infinite variety of
combinations. These combinations fall under the three main heads of solids,
liquids and gases, the recognised substates of physical matter, with the
theoretical ether scarcely admitted as material. Ether, to the scientist,
is not a substate or even a state of matter, but is a something apart by
itself. It would not be allowed that gold could be raised to the etheric
condition as it might be to the liquid and gaseous; whereas the occultist
knows that the gaseous is succeeded by the etheric, as the solid is
succeeded by the liquid, and he knows also that the word "ether" covers
four substates as distinct from each other as are the solids, liquids and
gases, and that all chemical elements have their four etheric substates,
the highest being common to all, and consisting of the ultimate physical
atoms to which all elements are finally reducible. The chemical atom is
regarded as the ultimate particle of any element, and is supposed to be
indivisible and unable to exist in a free state. Mr. Crookes' researches