The Theosophical Society, as such, is not responsible for any opinion, or declaration in this magazine, by whomsoever expressed, unless contained in an official document. RADIUM AND MANVANTARAS EADERS of modern scientific thought have already declared that the conception of Matter and Force reached by the study of radioactivity, the view that all chemical elements are built up of intensely active electrical particles, provides a meeting ground for science and theology. The thought is that we have attained to a conception of Substance which is at once Matter and Spirit, a form of Being of which Spirit or energy is the one pole, while Matter is the other. It is of high interest to find that, resolutely pushing forward the investigation of radioactivity in another direction, and pondering over the results with the scientific imagination, leaders of science have tentatively reached certain views concerning the larger processes of world-life which are to be found in essence, and even worked out in some detail, in the religious philosophy of the older scriptures, inspired by the Eastern Wisdom. An example of this broader and deeper use of the scientific imagination may be found in Professor Frederick Soddy's able work, The Interpretation of Radium (already referred to in earlier "Notes and Comments"), the Preface of which is dated July, 1920. The way in which these imaginative, and, as we think, deeply intuitive speculations came into being, is also profoundly interesting. The main substance of the book is made up of lectures delivered by Professor Soddy, beginning as long as seventeen years ago, while the book finally left the author's hands only last year. The process suggested by the composite, though well digested result, is this: It would seem as though Professor Soddy, after he had spent many years in actual laboratory work, and had summed up the concrete results, with illustrative experiments, in the various series of lectures; after he had "liberated his soul" in giving birth to these more tangible things,-had allowed his soul to have its own way, to ponder and brood, to perform concentrated meditation, as Patanjali would say, upon this whole mass of wonderful material, and that, |