o settle no more what strange
things cannot happen, till he has seen what strange things do happen
every day.

If he says that things cannot degrade, that is, change downwards into
lower forms, ask him, who told him that water-babies were lower than
land-babies? But even if they were, does he know about the strange
degradation of the common goose-barnacles, which one finds sticking on
ships' bottoms; or the still stranger degradation of some cousins of
theirs, of which one hardly likes to talk, so shocking and ugly it is?

And, lastly, if he says (as he most certainly will) that these
transformations only take place in the lower animals, and not in the
higher, say that that seems to little boys, and to some grown people, a
very strange fancy. For if the changes of the lower animals are so
wonderful, and so difficult to discover, why should not there be changes
in the higher animals far more wonderful, and far more difficult to
discover? And may not man, the crown and flower of all things, undergo
some change as much more wonderful than all the rest, as the Great
Exhibition is more wonderful than a rabbit-burrow? Let him answer that.
And if he says (as he will) that not having seen such a change in his
experience, he is not bound to believe it, ask him respectfully, where
his microscope has been? Does not each of us, in coming into this world,
go through a transformation just as wonderful as that of a sea-egg, or a
butterfly? and do not reason and analogy, as well as Scripture, tell us
that that transformation is not the last? and that, though what we shall
be, we know not, yet we are here but as the crawling caterpillar, and
shall be hereafter as the perfect fly. The old Greeks, heathens as they
were, saw as much as that two thousand years ago; and I care very little
for Cousin Cramchild, if he sees even less than they. And so forth, and
so forth, till he is quite cross. And then tell him that if there are
no water-babies, at least there ought to be; and that, at least, he
cannot answer.

And meanwhile, my dear little man, till you know a great deal more about
nature than Professor Owen and Professor Huxley put together, don't tell
me about what cannot be, or fancy that anything is too wonderful to be
true. "We are fearfully and wonderfully made," said old David; and so we
are; and so is everything around us, down to the very deal table. Yes;
much more fearfully and wonderfully made, already, is the table, as it
stan