On the other hand, should some future great chemical discovery realize the dream of the alchemists, and enable us to transmute iron into gold, and indeed every chemical Element into every other chemical Element (convertible identity), still the sixty-four (nearly) Chemical Elements now known would remain the real Elements of Organic and Inorganic Compounds, in a sense just 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 him to produce that precious gem.