They are very wise men ; and you must listen respectfully to all they say : but even if they should say , which I am sure they never would , `` That can not exist . That is contrary to nature , '' you must wait a little , and see ; for perhaps even they may be wrong . It is only children who read Aunt Agitate 's Arguments , or Cousin Cramchild 's Conversations ; or lads who go to popular lectures , and see a man pointing at a few big ugly pictures on the wall , or making nasty smells with bottles and squirts , for an hour or two , and calling that anatomy or chemistry - - who talk about `` can not exist , '' and `` contrary to nature . '' Wise men are afraid to say that there is anything contrary to nature , except what is contrary to mathematical truth ; for two and two can not make five , and two straight lines can not join twice , and a part can not be as great as the whole , and so on -LRB- at least , so it seems at present -RRB- : but the wiser men are , the less they talk about `` can not . '' That is a very rash , dangerous word , that `` can not '' ; and if people use it too often , the Queen of all the Fairies , who makes the clouds thunder and the fleas bite , and takes just as much trouble about one as about the other , is apt to astonish them suddenly by showing them , that though they say she can not , yet she can , and what is more , will , whether they approve or not . And therefore it is , that there are dozens and hundreds of things in the world which we should certainly have said were contrary to nature , if we did not see them going on under our eyes all day long . If people had never seen little seeds grow into great plants and trees , of quite different shape from themselves , and these trees again produce fresh seeds , to grow into fresh trees , they would have said , `` The thing can not be ; it is contrary to nature . '' And they would have been quite as right in saying so , as in saying that most other things can not be . Or suppose again , that you had come , like M. Du Chaillu , a traveller from unknown parts ; and that no human being had ever seen or heard of an elephant . And suppose that you described him to people , and said , `` This is the shape , and plan , and anatomy of the beast , and of his feet , and of his trunk , and of his grinders , and of his tusks , though they are not tusks at all , but two fore teeth run mad ; and this is the section of his skull , more like a mushroom than a reasonable skull of a reasonable or unreasonable beast ; and so forth , and so forth ; and though the beast -LRB- which I assure you I have seen and shot -RRB- is first cousin to the little hairy coney of Scripture , second cousin to a pig , and -LRB- I suspect -RRB- thirteenth or fourteenth cousin to a rabbit , yet he is the wisest of all beasts , and can do everything save read , write , and cast accounts . '' People would surely have said , `` Nonsense ; your elephant is contrary to nature ; '' and have thought you were telling stories -- as the French thought of Le Vaillant when he came back to Paris and said that he had shot a giraffe ; and as the king of the Cannibal Islands thought of the English sailor , when he said that in his country water turned to marble , and rain fell as feathers . They would tell you , the more they knew of science , `` Your elephant is an impossible monster , contrary to the laws of comparative anatomy , as far as yet known . '' To which you would answer the less , the more you thought . Did not learned men , too , hold , till within the last twenty-five years , that a flying dragon was an impossible monster ? And do we not now know that there are hundreds of them found fossil up and down the world ? People call them Pterodactyles : but that is only because they are ashamed to call them flying dragons , after denying so long that flying dragons could exist . The truth is , that folks ' fancy that such and such things can not be , simply because they have not seen them , is worth no more than a savage 's fancy that there can not be such a thing as a locomotive , because he never saw one running wild in the forest . Wise men know that their business is to examine what is , and not to settle what is not . They know that there are elephants ; they know that there have been flying dragons ; and the wiser they are , the less inclined they will be to say positively that there are no water-babies . No water-babies , indeed ?
Why , wise men of old said that everything on earth had its double in the water ; and you may see that that is , if not quite true , still quite as true as most other theories which you are likely to hear for many a XXXXX .
Chaillu English Islands Scripture Vaillant day first fossil fourteenth second