thicker and more prominent, and this increase of size is produced by an augmentation (so slight as to be barely perceptible) in the proportion to one another of the different orders of spirillae and in the number of dots in the lowest.  This augmentation, amounting at present to not more than .00571428 of the whole of each case, suggests the unexpected possibility that this portion of the atom may be somehow actually undergoing a change—­may in fact be in process of growth, as there is reason to suppose that these three thicker spirals originally resembled the others.

Since observation shows us that each physical atom is represented by forty-nine astral atoms, each astral atom by forty-nine mental atoms, and each mental atom by forty-nine of those on the buddhic plane, we have here evidently several terms of a regular progressive series, and the natural presumption is that the series continues where we are no longer able to observe it.  Further probability is lent to this assumption by the remarkable fact that—­if we assume one dot to be what corresponds to an atom on the seventh or highest of our planes (as is suggested in The Ancient Wisdom, p. 42) and then suppose the law of multiplication to begin its operation, so that 49 dots shall form the atom of the next or sixth plane, 2401 that of the fifth, and so on—­we find that the number indicated for the physical atom (496) corresponds almost exactly with the calculation based upon the actual counting of the coils.  Indeed, it seems probable that but for the slight growth of the three thicker wires of the atom the correspondence would have been perfect.

It must be noted that a physical atom cannot be directly broken up into astral atoms.  If the unit of force which whirls those millions of dots into the complicated shape of a physical atom be pressed back by an effort of will over the threshold of the astral plane, the atom disappears instantly, for the dots are released.  But the same unit of force, working now upon a higher level, expresses itself not through one astral atom, but through a group of 49.  If the process of pressing back the unit of force is repeated, so that it energises upon the mental plane, we find the group there enlarged to the number of 2401 of those higher atoms.  Upon the buddhic plane the number of atoms formed by the same amount of force is very much greater still—­probably the cube of 49 instead of the square, though they have not been actually counted.  Therefore one physical atom is not composed of forty-nine astral or 2401 mental atoms, but corresponds to them, in the sense that the force which manifests through it would show itself on those higher planes by energising respectively those numbers of atoms.

The dots, or beads, seem to be the constituents of all matter of which we, at present, know anything; astral, mental and buddhic atoms are built of them, so we may fairly regard them as fundamental units, the basis of matter.