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.

To astral vision ether is a visible thing, and is seen permeating all
substances and encircling every particle. A "solid" body is a body composed
of a vast number of particles suspended in ether, each vibrating backwards
and forwards in a particular field at a high rate of velocity; the
particles are attracted towards each other more strongly than they are
attracted by external influences, and they "cohere," or maintain towards
each other a definite relation in space. Closer examination shows that the
ether is not homogeneous but consists of particles of numerous kinds,
differing in the aggregations of the minute bodies composing them; and a
careful and more detailed method of analysis reveals that it has four
distinct degrees, giving us, with the solid, liquid and gaseous, seven
instead of four substates of matter in the physical world.

These four etheric substates will be best understood if the method be
explained by which they were studied. This method consisted of taking what
is called an atom of gas, and breaking it up time after time, until what
proved to be the ultimate physical atom was reached, the breaking up of
this last resulting in the production of astral, and no longer physical
matter.

[Illustration]

It is, of course, impossible to convey by words the clear conceptions that
are gained by direct vision of the objects of study, and the accompanying
diagram--cleverly drawn from the description given by the investigators--is
offered as a substitute, however poor, for the lacking vision of the
readers. The horizontal lines separate from each other the seven substates
of matter; solid, liquid, gas, ether 4, ether 3, ether 2, ether 1. On the
gas level are represented three chemical atoms, one of hydrogen (H), one of
oxygen (O), one of nitrogen (N). The successive changes undergone by each
chemical atom are shown in the compartments vertically above it, the
left-hand column showing the breaking up of the hydrogen atom, the middle
column that of the oxygen atom, the right-hand column, that of the nitrogen
atom. The ultimate physical atom is marked _a_, and is