r.
Leadbeater in its further progress. Encouraged by the success with
hydrogen, the two important gases, oxygen and nitrogen, were examined. They
proved to be rather more difficult to deal with than hydrogen but were
manageable. Oxygen was found to consist of 290 minor atoms and nitrogen of
261. Their grouping will be described later on. The interest and importance
of the whole subject will best be appreciated by a rough indication of the
results first attained. The reader will then have more patience in
following the intricacies of the later discoveries.

The figures just quoted were soon perceived to have a possible
significance. The atomic weight of oxygen is commonly taken as 16. That is
to say, an atom of oxygen is sixteen times heavier than an atom of
hydrogen. In this way, all through the table of atomic weights, hydrogen is
taken as unity, without any attempt being made to estimate its absolute
weight. But now with the atom of hydrogen dissected, so to speak, and found
to consist of 18 somethings, while the atom of oxygen consisted of 290 of
the same things, the sixteen to one relationship reappears: 290 divided by
18 gives us 16 and a minute decimal fraction. Again the nitrogen number
divided by 18 gives us 14 and a minute fraction as the result, and that is
the accepted atomic weight of nitrogen. This gave us a glimpse of a
principle that might run all through the table of atomic weights. For
reasons having to do with other work, it was impossible for the authors of
this book to carry on the research further at the time it was begun. The
results already sketched were published as an article in the magazine then
called _Lucifer_, in November, 1895, and reprinted as a separate pamphlet
bearing the title "Occult Chemistry," a pamphlet the surviving copies of
which will one day be a recognised vindication of the method that will at
some time in the future be generally applied to the investigation of
Nature's mysteries. For the later research which this volume deals with
does establish the principle with a force that can hardly be resisted by
any fair-minded reader. With patience and industry--the authors being
assisted in the counting in a way that will be described (and the method
adopted involved a check upon the accuracy of the counting)--the minor
atoms of almost all the known chemical elements, as they are commonly
called, were counted and found to bear the same relation to their atomic
weights as had been sug