s simply a reprint of the original edition except
for the correction of a few trifling misprints.

I have thus endeavoured to bring into clear prominence at the outset the
scientific value of the light the book sheds on the constitution of matter.
The world owes a debt to scientific men of the ordinary type that cannot be
over-estimated, but though they have hitherto preferred to progress
gradually, from point to point, disliking leaps in the dark, the leap now
made is only in the dark for those who will not realise that the progress
to be accomplished by means of instrumental research must sooner or later
be supplemented by subtler methods. Physical science has reached the
conception that the atoms of the bodies hitherto called the chemical
elements are each composed of minor atoms. Instrumental research cannot
determine by how many, in each case. Occult research ascertained the actual
number in some cases by direct observation and then discovered the law
governing the numbers in all cases, and the relation of these numbers to
atomic weights. The law thus unveiled is a demonstration of the accuracy of
the first direct observations, and this principle once established the
credibility of accounts now given as to the arrangement of minor atoms in
the molecules of the numerous elements examined, seems to me advanced to a
degree approximating to proof.

It remains to be seen--not how far, but rather how soon the scientific
world at large will accept the conclusions of this volume as a definite
contribution to science, blending the science of the laboratory with that
variety that has hitherto been called occult.

CONTENTS.

I.--A PRELIMINARY SURVEY

II.--DETAILS OF THE EARLY RESEARCH

THE PLATONIC SOLIDS

III.--THE LATER RESEARCHES

OCCULT CHEMISTRY.

CHAPTER I.

A PRELIMINARY SURVEY.

The deep interest and importance of the research which this book describes
will best be appreciated if introduced by an account of the circumstances
out of which it arose. The first edition, consisting mainly of articles
reprinted from the _Theosophist_, dealt at once with the later phases of
the research in a way which, though intelligible to the occult student,
must have been rather bewildering to the ordinary reader. These later
phases, however, endow the earlier results with a significance that in the
beginning could only be vaguely conjectured. I am the better entitled to
perform the task that