MAN. PHYSICALLY CONSIDERED. 



berries and roots. The children in the town when they 

 first saw him called him Peter, and he ever afterwards 

 went by that name. He appeared nearly destitute of 

 sense did not like bread, but would eat grass, bean 

 shells, and the peeling of green sticks. He was very 

 averse to any clothing, but soon became accustomed to 

 it. Monboddo and Rousseau were in raptures when they 

 heard of the discovery of this wild boy. They consider- 

 ed him the true child of nature man in his genuine, 

 and unsophisticated state. Monboddo says, ' I consider 

 his history as a brief chronicle, or abstract of the history 

 of the progress of human nature, from the mere animal 

 to the first stage of civilized life.' About this time meta- 

 physicians were in a warm controversy respecting innate 

 ideas, and this poor boy was entrusted to the care of Dr 

 Arbuthnot, that he might watch the development of his 

 innate ideas and thus determine the question. 



But unfortunately some subsequent facts came to light 

 which put to flight all their hopes. It seems that when 

 he was first met a small fragment of a shirt hung about 

 his neck ; and the whiteness of one part of his body 

 contrasted with the brownness of other parts, proved 

 that he must have worn trowsers, though not stockings. 

 Some boatmen descending the river Weser, upon whose 

 banks he was found, had several times seen a poor nak- 

 ed boy and had given him food. By following up these in- 

 quiries, at length it was ascertained, this child was born 

 an idiot and dumb, that he once was lost in the woods 

 for some time and again returned home. Upon his 

 father's second marriage, a cruel stepmother drove him 

 again from home. And this poor idiot was made the 

 foundation of an argument intended to elevate the mon- 

 key and to degrade mankind. 



Some philosophers, have gone even farther than this. 

 They claim affinity with the oyster ! As we retrace the 

 line of our ancestry we are landed in the humble origin 

 of a bed of oysters. How are the mighty fallen 1 ' Dr 

 Darwin* seriously conjectures that as aquatic animals 



* Dr Erasmus Darwin was born at Newark, in Nottinghamshire, 

 1732. He was a man ofliberal education; devoted himself pariicu- 



