288 PSYCHOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION. [PART II. 



longing to his stock, and possesses, as we nave already seen, 

 at the beginning of his life, certain physical and psychical cha- 

 racters hereditarily acquired, which prevent us from considering 

 him as the representative of a primitive state. From this it 

 would appear, that not only cannot we take infancy as the 

 standard of the primitive condition of mankind, but that the 

 latter can nowhere be found ; and it is folly to search for its 

 characters, partly because man at all times must have learned 

 from tradition through his parents, without which supposition 

 we cannot think of him, and also because he must everywhere 

 have exhibited the typical character of his stock, and not 

 merely the general peculiarities of humanity. 



The discussion of this point becomes difficult as we find our- 

 selves on the limits of our experimental knowledge. Since we 

 cannot obtain from science any clue as to the origin of man, it 

 must remain undecided whether there ever have been men who 

 have grown up without any traditional instruction from others, 

 and whether they have not at all times possessed, besides the 

 general characters of humanity, also certain separate peculiari- 

 ties of stock. But all these doubts are, for our question, only 

 of subordinate interest. We might even admit that the " na- 

 tural man" is a mere fiction, and has never anywhere existed 

 in reality, like a circle or an ellipse in a geometrical sense, and 

 which, like all abstract notions, possess an individual existence, 

 without at all impairing their value in a scientific investigation. 

 We wish here to obtain a clear idea how we must think of man 

 as he was before, and independent of, all cultivation, and it is for 

 this object quite indifferent whether there have ever been indi- 

 viduals perfectly corresponding to that state which we term the 

 natural state. That man at his first appearance upon the earth, 

 and immediately after it, must have approximated to that state 

 seems pretty evident from the absence of cultivation, which we 

 were obliged to assume. 



From what has been stated, it is clear that this primitive 

 state is neither represented in children, nor in those individuals 

 who, born of civilized parents, have grown up in an isolated 

 state in forests, and have been found again in an adult 

 age. Such persons have formerly been described as real na- 



