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Page 3
Long before the discovery of radium led to the recognition of the electron
as the common constituent of all the bodies previously described as
chemical elements, the minute particles of matter in question had been
identified with the cathode rays observed in Sir William Crookes' vacuum
tubes. When an electric current is passed through a tube from which the air
(or other gas it may contain) has been almost entirely exhausted, a
luminous glow pervades the tube manifestly emanating from the cathode or
negative pole of the circuit. This effect was studied by Sir William
Crookes very profoundly. Among other characteristics it was found that, if
a minute windmill was set up in the tube before it was exhausted, the
cathode ray caused the vanes to revolve, thus suggesting the idea that they
consisted of actual particles driven against the vanes; the ray being thus
evidently something more than a mere luminous effect. Here was a mechanical
energy to be explained, and at the first glance it seemed difficult to
reconcile the facts observed with the idea creeping into favour, that the
particles, already invested with the name "electron," were atoms of
electricity pure and simple. Electricity was found, or certain eminent
physicists thought they had found, that electricity _per se_ had inertia.
So the windmills in the Crookes' vacuum tubes were supposed to be moved by
the impact of electric atoms.
Then in the progress of ordinary research the discovery of radium by Madame
Curie in the year 1902 put an entirely new face upon the subject of
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.
* * * * *
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
have led the more advanced chemists to regard the atoms as compound, as a
more or less complex aggregation of protyle.
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