Editing The Water-Babies (section)

==Interpretation==
In the style of [[Victorian era|Victorian-era]] novels, ''The Water-Babies'' is a [[didactic]] moral [[fable]]. In it, Kingsley expresses many of the common prejudices of that time period, and the book includes dismissive or insulting references to Americans,{{efn|
When Tom has "everything that he could want or wish," the reader is warned that sometimes this does bad things to people: "Indeed, it sometimes makes them naughty, as it has made the people in America". Murderous crows that do whatever they like are described as being like "American citizens of the new school".<ref name=Sander-2004/>
}}
[[Jews]],{{efn|
Jews are referred to twice in the text, first as archetypal rich people ("as rich as a Jew"), and then as a joking reference to dishonest merchants who sell fake religious icons – "young ladies walk about with lockets of [[Charles I of England|Charles the First]]'s hair (or of somebody else's, when the Jews' genuine stock is used up)".<ref name=Sander-2004/>
}}
[[black people|Blacks]],{{efn|
The Powwow man is said to have "yelled, shouted, raved, roared, stamped, and danced corrobory like any black fellow," and a seal is described as looking like a "fat old greasy negro".<ref name=Sander-2004/>
}}
and [[Catholic Church|Catholics]],{{efn|
"Popes" are listed among [[Measles]], Famines, [[Despotism|Despot]]s, and other "children of the four great bogies."<ref name=Sander-2004/>
}}
particularly the [[Irish Catholic|Irish]].{{efn|
Ugly people are described as "like the poor Paddies who eat potatoes"; an extended passage discusses [[Brendan the Navigator|St. Brandan]] among the Irish who liked "to brew [[poteen|potheen]], and dance the [[pater o'pee]],{{efn|
''[[Pater o'pee]]'' is an intricate solo dance involving stepping in and around sticks or staves laid crosswise on the ground.<ref>{{cite book |title=Wild Sports of the West |place=London, UK |publisher=W.H. Maxwell, E.P. |year=1850}}</ref>
}}
and knock each other over the head with [[Shillelagh (club)|shillelagh]]s, and shoot each other from behind turf-dykes, and steal each other's cattle, and burn each-other's homes". One character (Dennis) lies and says whatever he thinks others want to hear because "he is a poor Paddy, and knows no better". The statement that Irishmen always lie is used to explain why "poor ould Ireland does not prosper like England and Scotland".<ref name=Sander-2004>{{cite book | first=David | last=Sandner |author-link=David Sandner | year=2004 | title=Fantastic Literature: A Critical Reader | page=328 | publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group | isbn=0-275-98053-7}}</ref>
}}

The book had been intended in part as a satire, a tract against [[child labour]],<ref>{{cite journal |last=Holt |first=Jenny |date=September 2011 |title='A Partisan Defence of Children'? Kingsley's The Water-Babies Re-Contextualized |journal=Nineteenth-Century Contexts |volume=33 |issue=4 |pages=353–370 |doi=10.1080/08905495.2011.598672 |s2cid=192155414}}</ref> as well as a serious critique of the closed-minded approaches of many scientists of the day<ref>{{cite book |author=Milner, Richard |year=1990 |title=The Encyclopedia of Evolution: Humanity's search for its origins |page=458}}</ref> in their response to [[Charles Darwin]]'s ideas on [[evolution]], which Kingsley had been one of the first to praise. He had been sent an advance review copy of ''[[On the Origin of Species]]'', and wrote in his response of 18&nbsp;November 1859 (four days before Darwin's book was published) that he had "long since, from watching the crossing of domesticated animals and plants, learnt to disbelieve the dogma of the permanence of species," and had "gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of Deity, to believe that He created primal forms capable of self development into all forms needful ''[[pro tempore]]'' and ''[[Pro Loco|pro loco]]'', as to believe that He required a fresh act of intervention to supply the [[wikt:lacuna|lacuna]]s which He Himself had made", asking "whether the former be not the loftier thought."<ref>{{Harvp|Darwin|1887|p=[http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F1452.2&viewtype=text&pageseq=303 287].}}</ref>

In the book, for example, Kingsley argues that no person is qualified to say that something that they have never seen (like a human [[Soul (spirit)|soul]] or a water-baby) [[Burden of proof (philosophy)#Proving a negative|does not exist]].

<blockquote>
"How do you know that? Have you been there to see? And if you had been there to see, and had seen none, that would not prove that there were none&nbsp;... And no one has a right to say that no water-babies exist, till they have seen no water-babies existing; which is quite a different thing, mind, from not seeing water-babies... You must not talk about " ain’t ” and " can’t ” when you speak of this great wonderful world round you, of which the wisest man knows only the very smallest corner, and is, as the great Sir Isaac Newton said, only a child picking up pebbles on the shore of a boundless ocean.  You must not say that this cannot be, or that that is contrary to nature. You do not know what nature is, or what she can do; and nobody knows; not even Sir Roderick Murchison, or Professor Owen, or Professor Sedgwick, or Professor Huxley, or Mr. Darwin, or Professor Faraday, or Mr. Grove."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kingsley |first=Charles |url=https://archive.org/details/waterbabiesfairy00king_9/page/71/mode/1up?q=roderick |title=The water-babies : a fairy tale for a land-baby |date=1863 |publisher=London; Cambridge : Macmillan |others=Fisher - University of Toronto |pages=71}}</ref>
</blockquote>

In his ''Origin of Species,'' Darwin mentions that, like many others at the time, he thought that changed habits produce an inherited effect, a concept now known as [[Lamarckism]].<ref>{{Harvp|Darwin|1860|p=[http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F376&viewtype=text&pageseq=152 134]}}</ref> <!-- this unsourced statement seems off-topic: Kingsley was a proponent of the theory of [[degeneration]],{{Citation needed|date=June 2007}} the notion that [[evolution]] does not necessarily imply progress. --> In ''The Water-Babies'', Kingsley tells of a group of humans called the Doasyoulikes who are allowed to do "whatever they like" and who gradually lose the power of speech, [[Devolution (biological fallacy)|degenerate]] into [[gorilla]]s and are shot by the African explorer [[Paul Du Chaillu|du&nbsp;Chaillu]]. He refers to the [[Abolitionism|movement to end slavery]] in mentioning that one of the gorillas shot by du&nbsp;Chaillu "remembered that his ancestors had once been men, and tried to say, '[[Am I Not A Man And A Brother]]?', but had forgotten how to use his tongue".<ref>{{cite book |title=The Water-Babies |author=Kingsley, Charles |at=chapter&nbsp;VI, page&nbsp;12 |via=Pagebypagebooks.com |url=http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Charles_Kingsley/The_Water_Babies/Chapter_VI_p12.html |access-date=14 January 2013}}</ref>

[[File:Water-babies 2.jpg|thumb|[[Richard Owen]] and [[Thomas Henry Huxley]] inspect a water baby in [[Linley Sambourne]]'s 1885 illustration.]]

''The Water-Babies'' alludes to debates among biologists of its day, satirising what Kingsley had previously dubbed the [[Great Hippocampus Question|"great hippocampus question"]] as the "great hippopotamus test". At various times the text refers to "Sir&nbsp;[[Roderick Murchison]], Professor&nbsp;[[Richard Owen|(Richard) Owen]], Professor&nbsp;[[Thomas Henry Huxley|(Thomas Henry) Huxley]], (and) Mr.&nbsp;Darwin", and thus they become explicitly part of the story. In the accompanying illustrations by [[Linley Sambourne]], Huxley and Owen are caricatured, studying a captured water-baby. In 1892 Thomas Henry Huxley's five-year-old grandson [[Julian Huxley|Julian]] saw this engraving and wrote his grandfather a letter asking:

<blockquote>
Dear Grandpater – Have you seen a Waterbaby? Did you put it in a bottle? Did it wonder if it could get out? Could I see it some day? – Your loving Julian.<ref name=Huxley>{{cite book |editor=Huxley, Leonard |title=The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley |volume=3 |page=256}}</ref>
</blockquote>

Huxley wrote back a letter (later evoked by the ''[[The Sun (New York)|New York Sun]]''{{'}}s "[[Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus]]" in 1897):

<blockquote>
My dear Julian – I could never make sure about that Water Baby.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
I have seen Babies in water and Babies in bottles; the Baby in the water was not in a bottle and the Baby in the bottle was not in water. My friend who wrote the story of the Water Baby was a very kind man and very clever. Perhaps he thought I could see as much in the water as he did. – There are some people who see a great deal and some who see very little in the same things.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
When you grow up I dare say you will be one of the great-deal seers, and see things more wonderful than the Water Babies where other folks can see nothing.<ref name=Huxley/>
</blockquote>

=== Environmentalism ===
{{Quote box
| quote = Only where men are wasteful and dirty, and let sewers run into the sea, instead of putting the stuff upon the fields like thrifty reasonable souls; or throw herrings’ heads, and dead dog-fish, or any other refuse, into the water; or in any way make a mess upon the clean shore, there the water-babies will not come, sometimes not for hundreds of years (for they cannot abide anything smelly or foul) : but leave the sea-anemones and the crabs to clear away everything, till the good tidy sea has covered up all the dirt in soft mud and clean sand, where the water-babies can plant live cockles and whelks and razor shells and sea-cucumbers and golden-combs, and make a pretty live garden again, after man’s dirt is cleared away. And that, I suppose, is the reason why there are no water-babies at any watering-place which I have ever seen.
| author = Charles Kingsley
| source = The Water-Babies
| width = 50%
}}Literary critic, Naomi Wood, treats Kingsley's "characteristically Victorian naturalism as proto-environmentalism," since it both educates the reader about the environment but also advocates political action to protect the environment.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Wood |first=Naomi |date=1995 |title=A (Sea) Green Victorian: Charles Kingsley and The Water-Babies |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/35296 |journal=The Lion and the Unicorn |volume=19 |issue=2 |pages=233–252 |doi=10.1353/uni.1995.0033 |issn=1080-6563 |via=Project Muse}}</ref>  Kingsley is critical of industrial and urban pollution and wastefulness.  Catherine Judd points out that the city, the loud coal mining engines, and the stultifying country manor of a British landowner are all contrasted with an Edenic [[Northern England|Northern English]] landscape.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Judd |first=Catherine Nealy |date=March 2017 |title=Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies: Industrial England, The Irish Famine, and The American Civil War |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/victorian-literature-and-culture/article/charles-kingsleys-the-waterbabies-industrial-england-the-irish-famine-and-the-american-civil-war/37F2FD472437C061F6D739A8F8EE3940 |journal=Victorian Literature and Culture |language=en |volume=45 |issue=1 |pages=179–204 |doi=10.1017/S1060150316000498 |issn=1060-1503 |via=Cambridge University Press}}</ref>  With detailed descriptions of native fauna, Kingsley immerses his protagonist into a variety of biodiverse terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems so that readers are drawn to see themselves as part of nature.<ref name=":0" />