dissociation on it.  In this ultimate state of physical matter two types of atoms have been observed; they are alike in everything save the direction of their whorls and of the force which pours through them.  In the one case force pours in from the “outside,” from fourth-dimensional space,[4] and passing through the atom, pours into the physical world.  In the second, it pours in from the physical world, and out through the atom into the “outside” again,[4] i.e., vanishes from the physical world.  The one is like a spring, from which water bubbles out; the other is like a hole, into which water disappears.  We call the atoms from which force comes out positive or male; those through which it disappears, negative or female.  All atoms, so far as observed, are of one or other of these two forms. (Plate II.)

It will be seen that the atom is a sphere, slightly flattened, and there is a depression at the point where the force flows in, causing a heart-like form.  Each atom is surrounded by a field, formed of the atoms of the four higher planes, which surround and interpenetrate it.

The atom can scarcely be said to be a “thing,” though it is the material out of which all things physical are composed.  It is formed by the flow of the life-force[5] and vanishes with its ebb.  When this force arises in “space"[6]—­the apparent void which must be filled with substance of some kind, of inconceivable tenuity—­atoms appear; if this be artificially stopped for a single atom, the atom disappears; there is nothing left.  Presumably, were that flow checked but for an instant, the whole physical world would vanish, as a cloud melts away in the empyrean.  It is only the persistence of that flow[7] which maintains the physical basis of the universe.[8]

In order to examine the construction of the atom, a space is artificially made[9]; then, if an opening be made in the wall thus constructed, the surrounding force flows in, and three whorls immediately appear, surrounding the “hole” with their triple spiral of two and a half coils, and returning to their origin by a spiral within the atom; these are at once followed by seven finer whorls, which following the spiral of the first three on the outer surface, and returning to their origin by a spiral within that, flowing in the opposite direction—­form a caduceus with the first three.  Each of the three coarser whorls, flattened out, makes a closed circle; each of the seven finer ones, similarly flattened out, makes a closed circle.  The forces which flow in them, again, come from “outside,” from a fourth-dimensional space.[10] Each of the finer whorls is formed of seven yet finer ones, set successively at right angles to each other, each finer than its predecessor; these we call spirillae.[11]

It will be understood from the foregoing, that the atom cannot be said to have a wall of its own, unless these whorls of force can be so designated; its “wall” is the pressed back “space.”  As said in 1895, of the chemical atom, the force “clears itself a space, pressing back the undifferentiated matter of the plane, and making to itself a whirling wall of this matter.”  The wall belongs to space, not to the atom.