herefore, the argument as to suitability of language
appears to support my own theory; it being open to assume that after
formulation--that is, in alchemy's latter days--chemical nomenclature
and theories were employed by certain writers to veil heterodox
religious doctrine.

(1) PHILIP S. WELLBY, M.A., in _The Journal of the Alchemical Society_,
vol. ii. (1914), p. 104.

Another recent writer on the subject, my friend the late Mr ABDUL-ALI,
has remarked that "he thought that, in the mind of the alchemist at
least, there was something more than analogy between metallic and
psychic transformations, and that the whole subject might well be
assigned to the doctrinal category of ineffable and transcendent
Oneness. This Oneness comprehended all--soul and body, spirit and
matter, mystic visions and waking life--and the sharp metaphysical
distinction between the mental and the non-mental realms, so prominent
during the history of philosophy, was not regarded by these early
investigators in the sphere of nature. There was the sentiment, perhaps
only dimly experienced, that not only the law, but the substance of
the Universe, was one; that mind was everywhere in contact with its own
kindred; and that metallic transmutation would, somehow, so to speak,
signalise and seal a hidden transmutation of the soul."(1)

(1) SIJIL ABDUL-ALI, in _The Journal of the Alchemical Society_, vol.
ii. (1914), p. 102.

I am to a large extent in agreement with this view. Mr ABDUL-ALI
quarrels with the term "analogy," and, if it is held to imply any merely
superficial resemblance, it certainly is not adequate to my own
needs, though I know not what other word to use. SWEDENBORG'S term
"correspondence" would be better for my purpose, as standing for an
essential connection between spirit and matter, arising out of the
causal relationship of the one to the other. But if SWEDENBORG believed
that matter and spirit were most intimately related, he nevertheless had
a very precise idea of their distinctness, which he formulated in his
Doctrine of Degrees--a very exact metaphysical doctrine indeed. The
alchemists, on the other hand, had no such clear ideas on the subject.
It would be even more absurd to attribute to them a Cartesian dualism.
To their ways of thinking, it was by no means impossible to grasp
the spiritual essences of things by what we should now call chemical
manipulations. For them a gas was still a ghost and air a spirit. One
co