Transubstantiation will be nothing to this if it turns out to be true,
and you may go and tell your neighbour Januarius to shut up his shop
as the heretics mean to outbid him.

Now I think that the best service I can render to all you enterprising
young men is to turn devil's advocate, and do my best to pick holes in
your work.

By the way, Miklucho-Maclay has been here; I have seen a good deal of
him, and he strikes me as a man of very considerable capacity and
energy. He was to return to Jena to-day.

My friend Herbert Spencer will be glad to learn that you appreciate
his book. I have been HIS devil's advocate for a number of years, and
there is no telling how many brilliant speculations I have been the
means of choking in an embryonic state.

My wife does not know that I am writing to you, or she would say
apropos of your last paragraph that you are an entirely unreasonable
creature in your notions of how friendship should be manifested, and
that you make no allowances for the oppression and exhaustion of the
work entailed by what Jean Paul calls a "Tochtervolles Haus." I hope I
may live to see you with at least ten children, and then my wife and I
will be avenged. Our children will be married and settled by that
time, and we shall have time to write every day and get very wroth
when you do not reply immediately.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.