electrons. The beta particles emanating from radium were soon identified
with the electrons of the cathode ray. Then followed the discovery that the
gas helium, previously treated as a separate element, evolved itself as one
consequence of the disintegration of radium. Transmutation, till then
laughed at as a superstition of the alchemist, passed quietly into the
region of accepted natural phenomena, and the chemical elements were seen
to be bodies built up of electrons in varying number and probably in
varying arrangements. So at last ordinary science had reached one important
result of the occult research carried on seven years earlier. It has not
yet reached the finer results of the occult research--the _structure_ of
the hydrogen atom with its eighteen etheric atoms and the way in which the
atomic weights of all elements are explained by the number of etheric atoms
entering into their constitution.

The ether of space, though defying instrumental examination, comes within
scope of the clairvoyant faculty, and profoundly interesting discoveries
were made during what I have called the early research in connexion with
that branch of the inquiry. Etheric atoms combine to form molecules in many
different ways, but combinations involving fewer atoms than the eighteen
which give rise to hydrogen, make no impression on the physical senses nor
on physical instruments of research. They give rise to varieties of
molecular ether, the comprehension of which begins to illuminate realms of
natural mystery as yet entirely untrodden by the ordinary physicist.
Combinations below 18 in number give rise to three varieties of molecular
ether, the functions of which when they come to be more fully studied will
constitute a department of natural knowledge on the threshold of which we
already stand. Some day we may perhaps be presented with a volume on Occult
Physics as important in its way as the present dissertation on Occult
Chemistry.