286 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



society. He is now, we remember, at the end of his twenty-first year, 

 and our obvious comment is that he is well advanced for his age. With 

 his return to civilized life, the story properly closes; but the author of 

 the second work — the 'History of Automathes' — adds something on his 

 own account to clinch the moral. The immense progress which the 

 youth was able, by himself, to make was not, we are asked to recollect, 

 due to inward natural capacity. Had he been thrown entirely on his 

 own resources after his father's departure — had he, that is, been 

 deprived of the various aids his father left behind him — he would 

 inevitably have perished, or, surviving, have sunk to the level of the 

 brutes. In such a condition the race at large would have remained 

 in default of assistance from without. Hence, argues the author, 

 civilization must have depended, at the first, upon supernatural revela- 

 tion. Particularly must this have been the case, he further insists — 

 though the history of Autonous (or Automathes) hardly sustains the 

 contention — with all religious knowledge. We must, therefore, assume 

 a primeval revelation to all men, shadows and survivals of which are 

 to be found in heathen mythologies and extra-Christian speculations.* 



It is almost a pity, we are tempted to say, as we lay the strange 

 little book aside, that Autonous was rescued just when he was. Having 

 on his own account discovered so many things which it has taken 

 humanity thousands of years to find out, he might, had he been left 

 alone, have pushed his researches into who knows what fresh domains 

 of science, theoretical and applied. Or perhaps, it may be suggested, 

 his achievements were, after all, due to his peculiar conditions — to 

 abandon a child on an uninhabited island may, in other words, be the 

 very best way of developing his faculties. In an age which has already 

 gone wild over educational theories, some one may be glad to take this 

 idea under consideration. 



More serious comment is unnecessary. Our brief outline will have 

 sufficed to show the extravagance of Autonous's story, the clumsiness 

 of its machinery and its general lack of plausibility. Its further weak- 

 ness as a culture-study — the introduction of too many human aids to 

 mental growth — will also be equally apparent; though this is probably 

 referable to the author's realization of the impossibility of getting on 

 without such assistance, as testified in the actual case of the then famous 

 Wild Boy of Germany. But the little book does open up a number of 

 fascinating questions, and, in closing it, we may well ask why, in these 

 days of scientific and psychological fiction, some novelist in search of 

 fresh material does not try his hand on what is surely a not uninterest- 

 ing or unfruitful theme. 



* Compare Dryden, ' Introduction to Religio Laici.' 



