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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
The contact of Caspar Hauser ^ s hand or body with a magnet or with metals , and even the presence of metals , produced a singular and unpleasant sensation in him , as did shaking hands with any one , or the touch of an animal , as a horse or cat . Manyinstances of this singular sensation are related . Towards the end
of 1828 , when the morbid excitability of his nerves had been almost removed , this sensation began gradually to disappear , and was at length totally lost . Though full of childish gentleness and kindness , he had no presentiment of the existence of a God , or of a more elevated state of existence . Nothing appeared to him to have any reality that was beyond the reach of his senses .
* All attempts made in the common way to awaken religious ideas 5 n his mind , were for a long time entirely fruitless . With great naivete he complained to Professor Daumer , that he did not know what the clergymen meant by all the things that they told him ; of which he could comprehend nothing ! ! There were two orders of men , to whom Caspar had , for a considerable time , an unconquerable aversion—physicians and clergymen ; to the first , ** on account of the abominable medicines which they prescribed , and with which they made people sick ; " and to the latter , because , as he expressed himself , they made people afraid , and confused them with incomprehensible stuff . When he saw a minister , he w T as seized with horror and dismay . If he was asked the cause of this , he would reply—Because these people have already tormented me very much . Once , when I was at the tower , four of them came to me all at once , and told me things which at that time I could not at all comprehend ; for instance , that God had created all things out of nothing . When I asked them for an explanation , they all began to cry out at the same time , and every one said something different . When I told them , All these things I do not yet understand ; 1 must first learn to read and write ; they replied , These things must be learned first . Nor did they go away , until I signified to them my desire , that they would at length leave me at rest . In churches , therefore , Caspar felt by no means happy . The crucifixes which he saw there excited a horrible shuddering in him ; because for a long time he involuntarily ascribed life to images . The singing of the congregation seemed to him as a repulsive bawling . First , said he , after returning from attending a church , the people bawl ; and when they have done , the parson begins to bawl /
By the summer of 1829 , Caspar Hauser had made great progress in his education . He then collected his recollections of his life in a written memoir , which , though miserably executed , was much talked of and shown about . It is conjectured that his incarcerators became alarmed on learning this , for , on the 17 th of the ensuing October , an attempt was made to assassinate him , by a man in disguise , who inflicted a wound on his hcud . The wound itself , and the alarm attending it , brought on a state of delirium and frenzy , from which the unfortunate youth was long in
Untitled Article
524 Caspar Hauser .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1833, page 524, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2620/page/12/
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