able, and be forever relegated to the realm of faith and banished from the sphere of accurate knowledge. That such is not the case will be the main purpose of the following articles to demonstrate, and to show that if, under proper surroundings and with proper and complete facilities for experimental investigation, the proper persons could be had to carry on the work, a very large addition to the sum of knowledge," and to the means necessary to the higher life could be rapidly obtained. There has been a gradually growing conviction in the minds of the best thinkers, sambudhists and intuitionists, that all forces, no matter how mysterious, act mechanically by transforming a given amount of motion of one kind to an equal amount of motion of another kind; and that as soon as we know the exact conditions of operation, of action and reaction, of cause and effect, that we will understand the physical modus operandi of all forces and phenomena.

It is the crowning glory of the present century to have demonstrated the Law of the Conservation of Energy, or as otherwise denominated, the Law of the Persistence of Force. Foremost in this line of research are the names of Joule, and Mayer, who succeeded in giving to the a priori conceptions of the earliest Hindoo philosophers, an accurate definition and physical explanation of the how and the why of the great law. This law means that motion cannot come from nothing, or be transformed into nothing; that motion always comes from an equal amount of motion, and is always changed to an equal amount of motion; and that in the universe as a whole, there has always been and always will be, a uniform. quantity of motion. A familiar illustration of the law of conservation of forces is exhibited in the transformation of a given amount of heat to an equal amount of energy, in the form of electricity. For instance, the amount of heat required to melt a pound of ice will, if turned into electricity, again produce the same amount of heat. The amount of mechanical energy represented by 30,000 pounds falling from the height of one foot (which is one horse power, and is caused by the force of gravity), will develop in falling, a certain amount of heat, and that amount of heat properly applied in the conversion of water into steam, through a proper engine, would again raise the weight to the height of one foot; or the energy of the heat in the steam could be turned into electricity, and the electricity into light, and the light into chemical combination, and the chemical energy properly utilized would again raise the weight to the height of one foot. The meaning of this is, that no matter in what form the energy is, it is always capable of being transformed into an equal amount of energy in another form. We are not always able to do so in practice, because of various losses by friction and radiation, but these losses are not lost to Nature- we may not be able to save all the heat generated by a dynamo, but the amount lost can be measured and its energy computed. One horse power of energy has been converted into sound, the sound into another force, and that force successively converted int heat, light, chemical affinity, electricity, magnetism, teleferism, gravism, and then back into sound and mechanical motion, loosing in the actual experiment less than ten per cent of the energy started with, and an esti mate of the energy lost confirmed the statement that there is no loss in the transformation of forces.

As soon as the reader understands what a force is, it will be seen that it is necessarily true that there can be no loss of energy in the universe.

It will be gradually understood that all forces are motions of the eternal entity, that all forces are capable of producing definite quantitative effects, that all motion takes the direction of the least resistance, and it will be understood why these things are so. To the majority of people who have made a study of the phenomena of life, mind, and society, the forces concerned in the production of thought and mental transference, and in the phenomena of intuition and psycognomy, are as unknown and as unthinkable as the fourth dimension of space. The effect of buildings inhabited by immoral people upon those not immoral who momentarily enter them, the mutual effect of minds upon each other; the emotional conditions produced by places and things; the mental pictures, memory phantoms, retrospections and previsions common to those who are sensitive and susceptible to the higher forces will be reduced to the domain of physical law. Enough will be given in the course of these articles, if it is the will of the Inmost, to convince the most sceptical that there is a knowledge and a science, not taught in the books, and that the claboration of this knowledge will furnish material for the higher life of man, and for the utilization of those, who have developed within them that which is better than knowledge alone-soul-growth, and a moral character.

Many of the experiments herein alluded to have been made in the laboratories of the "secret scientific Association," and the proper repetition of them will be uniformly followed by the results herein indicated. If enough of this series of articles is correctly understood it will be evident that the prosecution of the experiments upon a larger scale, and with definite ends in view relating to the comprehension of the esoteric teachings, practices and devotions, will be a most important aid in the ultimation of the Esoteric Movement and the College. The preliminary portions must be well understood, or the other portions will be a riddle. The most familiar of the forces will be first examined, for the purpose of illustrating what a force is, how it acts, and for the more important purpose of acquiring the concepts necessary for the further study of the higher forces.

We look at an object, and the picture left in the mind, of that object, is called the concept of that object. If that object is capable of affecting any other of the senses except that of sight, and if those other senses have not learned of that object all it may have to teach them, then that concept in the mind is imperfect. As long as there is anything connected with that object, or with its relations to other objects that the senses. have not recognized, the concept of that object will be imperfect, and if that object be used as an illustration of some important truth or law, the illustration will fail in its purpose just to the extent that the concept is inaccurate. If you do not understand what is meant by vibration, every time the word is used in explaining an important fact, it will fail to teach you all it might teach you, were your concepts of the phenomenon more accurate. We will therefore, commence with the least complex of the forces, and with the most easily understood of the senses, and lay a basis for study of the higher forces and powers, as soon as the forces capable of affecting the six senses have been learned.*

*The six senses are hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, touching and tact; the latter is the sense by which we recognize that a stove is warm or cold, and is quite distinct from the sense of touch, by which we distinguish between rough and smooth bodies, polished or velvety, heavy or light bodies. The seventh and other senses will be noticed in due order-if the articles find acceptance to warrant being continued.

GENERAL PHENOMENA OF ACOUSTICS.

It was perhaps first recorded by Galileo, that the swinging of the pendulum is ischronous; that its motions take place in uniform intervals of time, whether in its swinging it describes a semicircle or only a fractional portion of that circle-whether it swings backward and forward one inch or ten feet, one complete to-and-fro motion takes place during exactly the same period of time. Pendulums of different lengths require different times for one complete oscillation-the longer the pendulum the longer the time required for one complete swing. But with a pendulum of a given length the interval of time elapsing between each complete to-and-fro motion is the same whether it moves backward and foward only a short distance or as far as it is capable of swinging, and this kind of motion is called isochronous (meaning equal time), and this is a property common to all oscillations and vibrations of any mass or aggregate, as well as that of the pendulum.

A resilient steel rod, one end of which is placed securely in a vice, can be made to oscillate with a rapidity dependent upon its length and thickness; and if the rod be not too long it will give forth a tone. It is readily observable that the frequency of the oscillations are dependent upon the length, the shorter the rod the faster the motions; and that any given length of rod oscillates with the same frequency per second, whether the motions be as large as they can be made, or as small as they are either visible or audible. A wire in a piano oscillates when it has been struck by the hammer, and the shorter the wire, the faster the oscillation, and the higher the tone in pitch. The long wires oscillate so slowly that their motions can be seen by the unaided eye. A guitar or violin string in a state of tension, between two supports, will give forth a tone when it has been picked or struck, and the tone will be higher in pitch the shorter the string is made, or the tighter it is stretched. A tone which is made by the shorter string, or the one in the greatest tension is said to be the highest in pitch, and this means that it is the most rapid in motion. Any given string or wire in a given state of tension can be made to oscillate loudly by striking it violently, and at the first, the motions are visible and audible, but they gradually become so short in their alternate excursions, that they are no longer visible or audible, but the pitch of the tone remains the same as long as it can be heard, and accurate measurements have determined that they continue of the same frequency as long as the motion continues. That is, the pitch remains the same but the amplitude diminishes. By amplitude is meant the distance through which the wire, string, or pendulum swings. in its alternate motions to-and-fro. The lesson to be learned from these experiments, which are only representatives of an innumerable class of like experiments is, that the larger and the longer the wire or string that is oscillating, the lower will be the pitch or the frequency of oscillation, and that pitch remains the same whether the body be oscillating violently or imperceptibly. The same string, wire, bell, gong, whistle, pipe, tuning fork, or reed has always the same pitch, but it can be made to sound loudly or gently when it sounds loudly the amplitude is great, and when it sounds gently the amplitude is small.

Other objects besides wires and reeds are capable of emitting tones; such as blocks of wood, stones, metallic spheres, and, in fact, any coherent elastic aggregate, is capable of oscillating at a frequency determinable by

its size and weight. The larger the object the lower the pitch: and if any given object oscillates at a frequency of, say one hundred per second, another object one-eighth as large will oscillate two hundred times per second, i. e. just twice as fast. If a given length of wire in a state of tension be caused to sound, it will emit a tone that is measurable by many methods at the command of the modern experimenter, and if the tone be thus measured and the wire then be made half as long with the same tension as before, and the pitch again measured, it will be observed that the frequency is just twice as fast in the latter case as in the former case; and a musician listening to the two sounds would observe that they were an octave apart (eight notes apart). The octave of any note is one oscillating twice as fast, and if the notes be produced by cubical or spherical bodies their ratio of volume will be as 1: 8 (as one is to eight approximately,) the density being the same in both cases.

The lowest oscillation that can be recognized as a tone by the human ear is about 16 per second, but it is not an agreeable musical tone until the oscillation is about twice as fast. If the slowest oscillation to be considered be one per second, then the slowest audible note will be just four octaves higher, and it may be said that the lower limit of human hearing commences at the fourth octave above one per second, which has a pitch of 16 oscillations per second. The next octave (32 per second) is generally the lowest note in an organ or a piano. The next octaves in their order are 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768, 65536, the latter being 16 octaves above one per second. The middle C of a piano is generally about 256; the highest note between the twelfth and thirteenth octave; and the upper limit of hearing with the majority of people lies somewhere between the 15th and 16th octave, and but few people can hear beyond 65000 per second. There are people capable of hearing the lower notes of the 17th, and some of the lower animals can hear the 18th (262,144 per second). The region beyond must still be conquered by the experience of man in his upward course. The remaining octaves are however capable of being apprehended by the delicate apparatus born of modern mechanical skill.

The picture to be formed in the mind of the reader by these statements is that of a series of bodies diminishing in size, each one smaller than the preceding one; and for convenience of illustration, each eighth object oneeight smaller than the eighth preceding body; and that each eighth body oscillates twice as rapidly as the one of which it is one-eighth as large; and that commencing with the fourth octave (the fifth body), the ear can hear about 12 octaves (from the 4th to the 16th); and that in each object oscillating, the pitch remains the same, but the amplitude or loudness varies with the energy expended upon it. Each object has a definite pitch at which it naturally oscillates, to make that object smaller is to make the pitch higher, and to make the object larger is to make the pitch lower.

It is to be observed that these objects can oscillate in the air or out of it; and that when they are put in a place from which the air has been pumped, that is in an atomic vacuum, the oscillations still continue but the ear cannot recognize them. Place a bell under a jar or within a jar and pump out the air and then ring the bell by shaking the jar and no sound can be heard; but as soon as air is admitted into the jar the sound is again audible. Fill the jar with water and the bell can also be heard. Numerous other experiments will convince you that atomic solids, liquids, and

gasses are necessary for the hearing of sounds given off by an oscillating aggregate.

If it were possible for a man to sit in a room from which the air had been pumped, and if there were placed in that room a piano played by another person, neither one could hear the sounds, because no air would be there to be thrown into waves of sound. Each oscillation of the wire, bell, or ball, throws the air into a wave motion, and there are as many of these waves as there are alternate motions of the swinging body. These waves will not be fully explained in the present paper; suffice it to say that they are alternate, condensations and rarefactions of the atmosphere, outwardly propagated from the body producing them, and that they travel at the ordinary temperature about 1040 feet per second through the air, and much faster through the water, and still faster through denser media. The concentric. circles upon water, spreading outwardly from the point where a pebble has been dropped, is a good illustration of the propagation of waves in the air, but it is only an illustration; if the waves instead of being the rising and falling of the horizontal surface of the water, be pictured as concentric globes surrounding the bell; and instead of being the rising and falling of a flat surface, picture the concentric globes to be constituted of air in different stages of compression and rarefaction: in the stage of compression the particles of the air are closer together, and in the stage of rarefaction they are farther apart. The well-known elasticity of the air makes this possible, and if the air were not elastic, sounds could not be heard.

Sound travels about 1040 feet per second, this can be estimated by counting how long it takes to hear the report of a distant gun after seeing the flash. The flash is seen almost instantly (light travels 186,000 miles per second) but the report reaches the ear about five seconds afterward, if the gun be one mile away (5280 ft.). This will do instead of accurate measurements. These experiments can be easily made by any one, and their explanation can be found in any good text book on physics. You can find all the scientific authority you may desire upon this point; and you may read in Tyndall on Sound, in Deschanel's or Ganot's Physics, many other experiments regarding the facts stated. But so far it is only hearsay. You have heard it from good authority, but until you have seen it for yourself it is not a revelation to you from the INFINITE ALL of which these phenomena form a part, of which you yourself are a portion. Until you make these experiments, or see them made, you must accept the word of the Infinite upon the authority of human testimony: are you willing to do that? Would you not feel more secure if you had talked to the Omnipotent himself?

Through the language of experiment, which is an exact form of observation, you can converse with the creator and the governor of the universe, and considering that the task is such an easy one, have you any excuse for not doing it? Or have you any excuse for not aiding in the establishment of a laboratory where these experiments can be seen by those who have not the skill or the means for doing them correctly? These particular experiments are not the only ones, they are simply used as an illustration with reference to other experiments and facts, to be hereafter studied. Until you have seen and understood a fact for yourself, your evidence of the truth depends upon hearsay, and upon a sense of consistency, both