ERECT ATTITUDE PECULIAR TO MAN. Il7 



individual in a healthy condition, has been known to do 

 otherwise. Yet even this has been contested : and as phi- 

 losophers have not been wanting to argue that we were na- 

 turally furnished with tails, but by some strange change or 

 chance had got rid of the degrading appendage ; so others 

 have held that we were designed by nature to go on all 

 fours*; justifying the acute remark, "Nihil tam absurdum 

 esse, quod non ab aliquo philosopho dictum fuit." 



The chief support of this notion concerning the human 

 subject being naturally quadruped, has been derived from 

 the examples of wild men; that is, children lost in woods, 

 and growing up in a solitary state. Even Linnjeus has 

 kindly taken them under his protection, and has provided a 

 respectable situation for them in his Systema Naturce, under 

 the head of " homo sai^iens f ems," to whom he assigns the 

 epithets tetrapus, miitus, hirsutus. 



What is this ' homo ferus' of Linns^.us ? How are we to 

 consider these wild men ? In different countries of Europe, 

 a few individuals — and very few indeed are authentically 

 recorded — have been met with in a solitary state ; — young 

 persons, wandering alone in woods, or mountainous regions. 

 To unsophisticated common sense they appear poor, half- 

 witted, stupid beings, incapable of speech, with faculties 

 very imperfectly developed, and therefore probably escaping 

 from or abandoned by their parents or friends. But their 

 case has been eagerly taken up and warmly defended by some 

 philosophers, who employ them to exemplify natural man — 

 the original uncorrupted creature — in opposition to those 

 who have become vitiated and degenerate by civilization. 

 When presented to us in so important a character, and with 

 such high pretensions, it is necessary to inquire a little into 

 the proofs of their pedigree and claims. 



Peter the Wild Boy, who lived many years in this coun- 



• MoscATi, von der korperlichen voesentlichen Unterschiedc zmschm der 

 Structur der Menschen und der Thiere ; Gutting. 1711. 8vo. 



ScuRAGE, a Dutchman, in a Dutch journal, entitled Genees-natuur-en 

 Huishoud-kundige Jaarboeken. T. 3. p, 32. 



