Projection operators may be used instead of vectors to represent the states of a quantum-mechanical system and the appropriate equation of motion is obtained. When a basis is used the basic vectors may be oblique or orthogonal. A formulation appropriate to an oblique basis is developed with the help of tensor methods and the summation convention. This is generalized to be applicable to systems containing $N$ electrons subject to Pauli's exclusion principle. The projection operator corresponding to an arbitrary state is the density operator and is represented by an $N\mathrm{th}$-order tensor. The well-known tensor operation of contraction of indices applied to the density operator furnishes similar, reduced operators giving one-, two-, or more-particle properties of the system. The one-particle properties are of special interest in chemical systems, the corresponding reduced density matrix being called the charge and bond order matrix by L\"owdin. The full formulas for the reduction of the general density matrix are given, showing the origin of the Coulomb and exchange operators.When the symbolic equation of motion is expressed by means of components and the process of contraction (reduction) is applied, the equation of motion of the one-particle reduction is obtained as well as an expression for the energy of the system. In the special case of the Hartree-Fock approximation the time-dependent wave equations for the one-particle orbitals are shown to satisfy the general equation of motion, suggesting that the energies of the individual orbitals need not be stationary. This approximation is characterized by the idempotent property of the one-particle reduced density matrix. This condition alone leads to a close restriction on the possible values of the charge and bond orders of a molecule. Specific formulas for the molecule butadiene show that these can be expressed in terms of two parameters only, in this case.