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517
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CASPAR HAUSER . *
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e proper study of mankind is man , ' says Pope ; and he might have added ; ' the chief amusement of mankind is man ; ' for not only do the metaphysician ^ the moralist ,, and the politician examine man in various lights , as a matter of study or of
business , but the idle while away their time , and the industrious relax themselves with human nature , under various forms , or placed in various circumstances . Novels and romances are treatises on human beings , for the amusement of human beings ; and the drama is entirely and exclusively devoted to the same end , through the same means . Kven little children must have their human
plaything , sometimes in the shape of a doll or of Punch , sometimes of a fairy , a giant , a dwarf , or necromancer ; for their infant powers , seeing only the exterior of man , and but part of that , seek exercise and excitement in the contemplation of beings with new forms and extended powers . The child is feeble in body , and he delights in contemplating corporeal strength ; he is poor and weak , and likes to think of unbounded wealth and power ; he
is confined in space , and dreams of beings who rove whither they will ; he is moral , and is amused with Punch's unbounded and ludicrous violations of morality . In short , he feels the shackles of childhood and humanity , and fondly imagines beings who are entirely free from the vulgar impediments to the will . But still his fancy hovers close to earth , and forms its brightest creations out of childish objects , pleasures , and emotions .
JLattle as we know what we are , and how this goodly partnership of body and mind became slowly concocted into its present condition , we kn 6 w still less what we were when infants , what we then felt and thought , what we then knew and had to learn . Little can we now conceive the wilderness of colours , odours , tastes , smells , and bodily feelings , pleasures , and pains , into which our
infant being was then thrown : —to have eyes , yet not to have learnt to see ; ears , without comprehending one sound ; hands , with no power to hold or touch , or knowledge of any thing to be touched or held ; ket , of no use until the complicated art of walking has been attained , after many experiments and many failures .
So little do we remember or know of our infant ' selves , so fruitlessly do we interrogate others in that condition , that those who have devoted themselves to the study of the mind , and who have long sought to trace the origin of our knowledge * , return , like travellers from a strange and unknown country , with wonderfully
* C \ si > au IIausiju . — An Account of an Individual kept in a Diin ^ eon , scnurutiMl from all communication with the World , from early Childhood to a hunt the A ^ c of Seventeen . Drawn up from lc ^ al documents , by Anschn von Funer !> ach . London : Simpkm and Marshall . 1833 ,
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1833, page 517, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2620/page/5/
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