74 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book IL 



But what fliall we lay of the ere(fl pofture ? Is it, too, from ac- 

 quired habit ? And, after what I have related of Peter the Wild 

 Boy, and other folitary favages that have been found in Europe, the 

 reader will not be furprifed whei) I tell him that my opinion is, that 

 walking upright is likewife an acquired habit. When we are in the mofl 

 natural itate of any, that is, w^hen we are born, we certainly go upon 

 all four : And, if we were to allow our children to take their natural 

 exeixife in that way, which, I am perfuaded, would do them a great 

 deal of good, they certainly would be fome years old before they 

 walked upright. This is the cafe of the children of the Caribbs, wha 

 run about in their huts upon all four, like little dogs ; and, after they 

 are grown up, and become great lads, they continue the fame prac- 

 tice, and run as faft upon all four as we do upon two legs ; and, 

 when they firft begin to eredl themfelves, they do it with great diffi- 

 culty, and fall very often *. Now, I think it is certain, that, without 

 imitation and inflrudion, thofe children would have continued all 

 their lives to go upon all four. 



Nor is this theory only, but it is, as I have fhown, proved by fads ; 

 for all the folitary favages, that were found in Europe before this cen- 

 tury, walked upon all four; and one of them was taught, with much 

 difficulty, to walk upright f. To thefe accounts I will add a ftory 

 which I had from a Swedifh gentleman, whom I faw in Edinburgh, 

 a fcholar of Linnaeus, which he heard him tell in his clafs ; 



There w^as a human creature caught in the w^oods of Saxony^, 

 In the time of Frederick Auguftus King of Poland. He was 

 running wild upon all four with' the bears, and, like them, 

 fed chiefly upon wild honey. The greateft difficulty, he faid, 



in 



* Pcre Tertrc's Hiftoire Generale des Antilles, Vol. ii*. Page 305. 

 \ Origin and Progrefs of Language, Vol. i. Page 186. fecond edition. 



