st as important as that in which they are now so
regarded. The now known Elements would still continue to constitute _The
Crude Natural Alphabet of Matter_, and be correspondential with _The
Crude Natural Alphabet of Sounds in Language_. The transmutability of
one element into another indefinitely, would not, in any but a certain
absolute or transcendental sense, cause the Elements to be regarded as
one, or as any less number than now. It would be, on the contrary, a
fact precisely corresponding with the actual and well-known
transmutability of speech-sounds into each other as occurs in the
phenomena of Etymology and Comparative Philology. This is so extensive,
as now understood by Comparative Philologists, that it would be hardly
difficult to prove that every sound is capable of being transmuted into
every other sound, either directly or through intermediates; and yet we
do not in the least tend to cease to regard the several sounds as they
stand as the real Elements of Speech.

It is this transmutability of Correspondential Elements in another
sphere of Being, which bases the presumption, or gives to it at least
countenance from a new quarter, that the metals and other chemical
Elements may be actually convertible substances by means of processes
not yet suspected or sufficiently understood. The more careful study of
the Analogy with the Elements of other spheres, and perhaps specifically
with the Elements of Language, under the presiding influence of larger
scientific generalizations and views than those which now prevail in the
scientific world, may be, and, it would even seem, ought to be the means
of revealing the law of Elementary Transmutations in the Chemical
Domain. The expectation of a future discovery of the resolution of the
existing Elements of Matter, and their convertibility even, is reviving
in the chemical field, and even so distinguished a chemist and thinker
as Professor Draper does not hesitate to sustain its probability by the
weight of his authority and belief. The process by which the
transmutation of Elements is actually effected in Language, is by _Slow
and Continued Attrition_. These very words suggest a process but little
resorted to in chemical experiment, but which probably intervenes in the
Laboratory of Nature, when she makes the diamond out of a substance,
simple carbon, the most familiarly known to chemistry, but out of which
the human chemist is entirely unable by any process known to h