d to know it all ill; which
is a great deal pleasanter and easier, and therefore quite right.

So Ellie and he were walking on the rocks, and he was showing her about
one in ten thousand of all the beautiful and curious things which are to
be seen there. But little Ellie was not satisfied with them at all. 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 don't
care about all these things, because they can'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,