Secondly, that our globe has its own special laboratory on the far-away outskirts of its atmosphere, crossing which, every Atom and molecule changes and differentiates from its primordial nature.
And thirdly, that though no element present on our Earth could ever possibly be found wanting in the Sun, there are many others there which have either not reached, or not as yet been discovered on our globe.
Some may be missing in certain stars and heavenly bodies in the process of formation; or, though present in them, these elements, on account of their present state, may not respond as yet to the usual scientific tests.[1003]
Mr. Crookes speaks of helium, an element of still lower atomic weight than hydrogen, an element purely hypothetical as far as our earth is concerned, though existing in abundance in the chromosphere of the Sun. Occult Science adds that not one of the elements regarded as such by Chemistry really deserves the name.
Again we find Mr. Crookes speaking with approbation of
Dr. Carnelly's weighty argument in favour of the compound nature of the so-called elements, from their analogy to the compound radicles.
Hitherto, Alchemy alone, within the historical period, and in the so-called civilized countries, has succeeded in obtaining a real element, or a particle of homogeneous Matter, the Mysterium Magnum of Paracelsus. But then that was before Lord Bacon's day.[1004]
... Let us now turn to the upper portion of the scheme. With hydrogen of atomic weight = 1, there is little room for other elements, save, perhaps, for hypothetical Helium. But what if we get “through the looking-glass,” and cross the zero line in search of new principles—what shall we find on the other side of zero? Dr. Carnelly asks for an element of negative atomic weight; here is ample room and verge enough for a shadow series of such unsubstantialities. Helmholtz says that electricity is probably as atomic as matter; is electricity one of the [pg 639]negative elements, and the luminiferous ether another? Matter, as we now know it, does not here exist; the forms of energy which are apparent in the motions of matter are as yet only latent possibilities. A substance of negative weight is not inconceivable.[1005] But can we form a clear conception of a body which combines with other bodies in proportions expressible by negative qualities?[1006]
A genesis of the elements such as is here sketched out would not be confined to our little solar system, but would probably follow the same general sequence of events in every centre of energy now visible as a star.
Before the birth of atoms to gravitate towards one another, no pressure could be exercised; but at the outskirts of the fire-mist sphere, within which all is protyle—at the shell on which the tremendous forces involved in the birth of a chemical element exert full sway—the fierce heat would be accompanied by gravitation sufficient to keep the newly-born elements from flying off into space. As temperature increases, expansion and molecular motion increase, molecules tend to fly asunder, and their chemical affinities become deadened; but the enormous: pressure of the gravitation of the mass of atomic matter, outside what I may for brevity call the birth-shell, would counteract the action of heat.