minor atoms in hydrogen, a figure which ordinary research has so far
entirely failed to determine. The guesses have been widely various, from
unity to many hundreds, but, unacquainted with the clairvoyant method, the
ordinary physicist has no means of reaching the actual state of the facts.

Before going on with the details of the later research some very important
discoveries arising from the early work must first be explained. As I have
already said clairvoyant faculty of the appropriate order directed to the
minute phenomena of Nature is practically infinite in its range. Not
content with estimating the number of minor atoms in physical molecules,
the authors proceeded to examine the minor atoms individually. They were
found to be themselves elaborately complicated structures which, in this
preliminary survey of the whole subject, I will not stop to explain (full
explanation will be found later on) and they are composed of atoms
belonging to an ultra-physical realm of Nature with which the occultist has
long been familiar and describes as "the Astral Plane." Some rather
pedantic critics have found fault with the term, as the "plane" in question
is of course really a sphere entirely surrounding the physical globe, but
as all occultists understand the word, "plane" simply signifies a condition
of nature. Each condition, and there are many more than the two under
consideration, blends with its neighbour, _via_ atomic structure. Thus the
atoms of the Astral plane in combination give rise to the finest variety of
physical matter, the ether of space, which is not homogeneous but really
atomic in its character, and the minute atoms of which physical molecules
are composed are atoms of ether, "etheric atoms," as we have now learned to
call them.

Many physicists, though not all, will resent the idea of treating the ether
of space as atomic. But at all events the occultist has the satisfaction of
knowing that the great Russian chemist, Mendeleef, preferred the atomic