As there is no way of proving a negative, and I am too loyal to raise a scandal, I will just father the scrawl.

Positively, I had forgotten all about the business.  I suppose because I did not hear who was appointed.  It would be a good argument for turning people out of office after 65!  But I have always had rather too much of the lawyer faculty of forgetting things when they are done with.

It was very jolly to have you here, and on principles of Christian benevolence you must not be so long in coming again.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

I do not remember being guilty of paying postage—­but that doesn’t count for much.

[The following is an answer to one of the unexpected inquiries which would arrive from all quarters.  A member of one of the religious orders working in the Church of England wrote for an authoritative statement on the following point, suggested by passages in section 5 of Chapter 1 of the “Elementary Physiology":—­When the Blessed Sacrament, consisting, temporally and mundanely speaking, of a wheaten wafer and some wine, is received after about seven hours’ fast, is it or is it not “voided like other meats”?  In other words, does it not become completely absorbed for the sustenance of the body?

Huxley’s help in this physiological question—­and his answer was to be used in polemical discussion—­was sought because an answer from him would be decisive and would obviate the repetition of statements which to a Catholic were painfully irreverent.]

Hodeslea, February 3, 1892.

Sir,

I regret that you have had to wait so long for a reply to your letter of the 27th.  Your question required careful consideration, and I have been much occupied with other matters.

You ask (1), whether the sacramental bread is or is not “voided like other meats”?

That depends on what you mean, firstly by “voided,” and, secondly, by “other meats.”  Suppose any “meat” (I take the word to include drink) to contain no indigestible residuum, there need not be anything “voided” at all—­if by “voiding” is meant expulsion from the lower intestine.

Such a meat might be “completely absorbed for the sustenance of the body.”  Nevertheless, its elements, in fresh combinations, would be eventually “voided” through other channels, e.g. the lungs and kidneys.  Thus I should say that under normal circumstances all “meats” (that is to say, the material substance of them) are voided sooner or later.

Now, as to the particular case of the sacramental wafer and wine.  Taking their composition and the circumstances of administration to be as you state them, it is my opinion that a small residuum will be left undigested, and will be voided by the intestine, while by far the greater part will be absorbed and eventually “voided” by the lungs, skin, and kidneys.

If any one asserts that the wafer and wine are voided by the intestine as such, that the “pure flour and water” of which the wafer consists pass out unchanged, I am of opinion he is in error.