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 day . There are land-babies -- then why not water-babies ? Are there not water-rats , water-flies , water-crickets , water-crabs , water-tortoises , water-scorpions , water-tigers and water-hogs , water-cats and water-dogs , sea-lions and sea-bears , sea-horses and sea-elephants , sea-mice and sea - urchins , sea-razors and sea-pens , sea-combs and sea-fans ; and of plants , are there not water-grass , and water-crowfoot , water - milfoil , and so on , without end ? `` But all these things are only nicknames ; the water things are not really akin to the land things . '' That 's not always true . They are , in millions of cases , not only of the same family , but actually the same individual creatures . Do not even you know that a green drake , and an alder-fly , and a dragon-fly , live under water till they change their skins , just as Tom changed his ? And if a water animal can continually change into a land animal , why should not a land animal sometimes change into a water animal ?
Do n't be put down by any XXXXX Cousin Cramchild 's arguments , but stand up to him like a man , and answer him -LRB- quite respectfully , of course -RRB- thus : - If Cousin Cramchild says , that if there are water-babies , they must grow into water-men , ask him how he knows that they do not ?
as at because from like of on than though without