Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 3

by Thomas Henry Huxley

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.

On the other hand, if any one maintains that the material substance of the wafer persists, while its accidents change, within the body, and that this identical substance is sooner or later voided, I do not see how he is to be driven out of that position by any scientific reasoning. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that the elementary particles of the wafer and of the wine which enter the body never lose their identity, or even alter their mass. If one could see one of the atoms of carbon which enter into the composition of the wafer, I conceive it could be followed the whole way—from the mouth to the organ by which it escapes—just as a bit of floating charcoal might be followed into, through, and out of a whirlpool.

[On October 6, 1892, died Lord Tennyson. In the course of his busy life, Huxley had not been thrown very closely into contact with him; they would meet at the Metaphysical Society, of which Tennyson was a silent member; and in the "Life of Tennyson" two occasions are recorded on which Huxley visited him.