Then have you lived before ? My dear child , who can tell ? One can only tell that , by remembering something which happened where we lived before ; and as we remember nothing , we know nothing about it ; and no book , and no man , can ever tell us certainly . There was a wise man once , a very wise man , and a very good man , who wrote a poem about the feelings which some children have about having lived before ; and this is what he said - `` Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; The soul that rises with us , our life 's star , Hath elsewhere had its setting , And cometh from afar : Not in entire forgetfulness , And not in utter nakedness , But trailing clouds of glory , do we come From God , who is our home . '' There , you can know no more than that . But if I was you , I would believe that . For then the great fairy Science , who is likely to be queen of all the fairies for many a year to come , can only do you good , and never do you harm ; and instead of fancying with some people , that your body makes your soul , as if a steam-engine could make its own coke ; or , with some people , that your soul has nothing to do with your body , but is only stuck into it like a pin into a pincushion , to fall out with the first shake ; -- you will believe the one true , orthodox , inductive , rational , deductive , philosophical , seductive , logical , productive , irrefragable , salutary , nominalistic , comfortable , realistic , and on-all-accounts-to-be-received doctrine of this wonderful fairy tale ; which is , that your soul makes your body , just as a snail makes his shell . For the rest , it is enough for us to be sure that whether or not we lived before , we shall live again ; though not , I hope , as poor little heathen Tom did . For he went downward into the water : but we , I hope , shall go upward to a very different place . But Tom was very happy in the water . He had been sadly overworked in the land-world ; and so now , to make up for that , he had nothing but holidays in the water-world for a long , long time to come . He had nothing to do now but enjoy himself , and look at all the pretty things which are to be seen in the cool clear water-world , where the sun is never too hot , and the frost is never too cold . And what did he live on ? Water-cresses , perhaps ; or perhaps water - gruel , and water-milk ; too many land-babies do so likewise . But we do not know what one-tenth of the water-things eat ; so we are not answerable for the water-babies . Sometimes he went along the smooth gravel water-ways , looking at the crickets which ran in and out among the stones , as rabbits do on land ; or he climbed over the ledges of rock , and saw the sand - pipes hanging in thousands , with every one of them a pretty little head and legs peeping out ; or he went into a still corner , and watched the caddises eating dead sticks as greedily as you would eat plum-pudding , and building their houses with silk and glue . Very fanciful ladies they were ; none of them would keep to the same materials for a day . One would begin with some pebbles ; then she would stick on a piece of green wood ; then she found a shell , and stuck it on too ; and the poor shell was alive , and did not like at all being taken to build houses with : but the caddis did not let him have any voice in the matter , being rude and selfish , as vain people are apt to be ; then she stuck on a piece of rotten wood , then a very smart pink stone , and so on , till she was patched all over like an Irishman 's coat . Then she found a long straw , five times as long as herself , and said , `` Hurrah ! my sister has a tail , and I 'll have one too ; '' and she stuck it on her back , and marched about with it quite proud , though it was very inconvenient indeed .
And , at that , tails became all the fashion among the caddis-baits in that pool , as they were XXXXX the end of the Long Pond last May , and they all toddled about with long straws sticking out behind , getting between each other 's legs , and tumbling over each other , and looking so ridiculous , that Tom laughed at them till he cried , as we did .
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