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.