She liked much better to play with live children , or even with dolls , which she could pretend were alive ; and at last she said honestly , `` I do n't care about all these things , because they ca n't play with me , or talk to me . If there were little children now in the water , as there used to be , and I could see them , I should like that . '' `` Children in the water , you strange little duck ? '' said the professor . `` Yes , '' said Ellie . `` I know there used to be children in the water , and mermaids too , and mermen . I saw them all in a picture at home , of a beautiful lady sailing in a car drawn by dolphins , and babies flying round her , and one sitting in her lap ; and the mermaids swimming and playing , and the mermen trumpeting on conch-shells ; and it is called ` The Triumph of Galatea ; ' and there is a burning mountain in the picture behind . It hangs on the great staircase , and I have looked at it ever since I was a baby , and dreamt about it a hundred times ; and it is so beautiful , that it must be true . '' But the professor had not the least notion of allowing that things were true , merely because people thought them beautiful . For at that rate , he said , the Baltas would be quite right in thinking it a fine thing to eat their grandpapas , because they thought it an ugly thing to put them underground . The professor , indeed , went further , and held that no man was forced to believe anything to be true , but what he could see , hear , taste , or handle . He held very strange theories about a good many things . He had even got up once at the British Association , and declared that apes had hippopotamus majors in their brains just as men have . Which was a shocking thing to say ; for , if it were so , what would become of the faith , hope , and charity of immortal millions ? You may think that there are other more important differences between you and an ape , such as being able to speak , and make machines , and know right from wrong , and say your prayers , and other little matters of that kind ; but that is a child 's fancy , my dear . Nothing is to be depended on but the great hippopotamus test . If you have a hippopotamus major in your brain , you are no ape , though you had four hands , no feet , and were more apish than the apes of all aperies . But if a hippopotamus major is ever discovered in one single ape 's brain , nothing will save your great-great-great-great - great-great-great-great-great-great-great-greater-greatest - grandmother from having been an ape too . No , my dear little man ; always remember that the one true , certain , final , and all - important difference between you and an ape is , that you have a hippopotamus major in your brain , and it has none ; and that , therefore , to discover one in its brain will be a very wrong and dangerous thing , at which every one will be very much shocked , as we may suppose they were at the professor . -- Though really , after all , it do n't much matter ; because -- as Lord Dundreary and others would put it -- nobody but men have hippopotamuses in their brains ; so , if a hippopotamus was discovered in an ape 's brain , why it would not be one , you know , but something else .
But the professor had gone , I am sorry to say , even further than XXXXX ; for he had read at the British Association at Melbourne , Australia , in the year 1999 , a paper which assured every one who found himself the better or wiser for the news , that there were not , never had been , and could not be , any rational or half - rational beings except men , anywhere , anywhen , or anyhow ; that nymphs , satyrs , fauns , inui , dwarfs , trolls , elves , gnomes , fairies , brownies , nixes , wills , kobolds , leprechaunes , cluricaunes , banshees , will-o ' - the-wisps , follets , lutins , magots , goblins , afrits , marids , jinns , ghouls , peris , deevs , angels , archangels , imps , bogies , or worse , were nothing at all , and pure bosh and wind .
If about after behind by in of since that to