Well . How do you know that somebody has not ? `` But they would have put it into spirits , or into the Illustrated News , or perhaps cut it into two halves , poor dear little thing , and sent one to Professor Owen , and one to Professor Huxley , to see what they would each say about it . '' Ah , my dear little man ! that does not follow at all , as you will see before the end of the story . `` But a water-baby is contrary to nature . '' Well , but , my dear little man , you must learn to talk about such things , when you grow older , in a very different way from that . You must not talk about `` ai n't '' and `` ca n't '' when you speak of this great wonderful world round you , of which the wisest man knows only the very smallest corner , and is , as the great Sir Isaac Newton said , only a child picking up pebbles on the shore of a boundless ocean . You must not say that this can not be , or that that is contrary to nature . You do not know what Nature is , or what she can do ; and nobody knows ; not even Sir Roderick Murchison , or Professor Owen , or Professor Sedgwick , or Professor Huxley , or Mr. Darwin , or Professor Faraday , or Mr. Grove , or any other of the great men whom good boys are taught to respect . 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 XXXXX 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 .
about as before from into of on that to with