The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: hence, though they are not learned enough to tell you now), their
skulls grow flat, their jaws grow out, and their brains grow small,
and their tails grow long, and they lose all their ribs (which I am
sure you would not like to do), and their skins grow dirty and
spotted, and they never get into the clear rivers, much less into
the great wide sea, but hang about in dirty ponds, and live in the
mud, and eat worms, as they deserve to do.
But that is no reason why you should ill-use them: but only why
you should pity them, and be kind to them, and hope that some day
they will wake up, and be ashamed of their nasty, dirty, lazy,
stupid life, and try to amend, and become something better once
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