age, was captured in the woods of Caune, in the
department Aveyron, in the south of France.
He had been seen some time before in the
woods looking after acorns and roots, upon
which, he subsisted. He was met towards
the close of the year 1798 by three sportsmen,
who seized him at the instant he was
climbing a tree to evade their pursuit. They
conducted him to a neighbouring village,
and put him under the care of an aged
matron; from whom, however, before the
end of a week, he contrived to escape, and fled
to the mountains, where he wandered about
during the severity of a most rigorous winter,
clad only in a tattered shirt. At night he
retired into solitary places, approaching, as the
day advanced, the neighbouring villages; and
in this manner he passed a vagrant life,
till the time in which, of his own accord, he
sought refuge in a dwelling-house in the canton
of St. Sernin. Here he was retained and taken
care of for two or three days, and from thence
was sent to the hospital of St. Afrique, afterwards
to Rhodez, where he was kept for several
months. During his abode in these different
places, he appeared to be always equally wild,
impatient of restraint, and capricious in his
temper, continually endeavouring to get away.

A scientific clergyman, then conceiving that
the education of this young savage might throw
some light on Rousseau's theories, and on the
moral science of man, sent the wild boy to Paris
in 1799, under the care of an old man, who
promised to be a father to him if the world of Paris
should ever get tired of and abandon him. He
was the lion of Paris for a month or so. The
great wonder there was what he would say of
Paris when he began to talk and observe. At
present he neither observed nor spoke, and was,
in fact, a slovenly, rather disgusting, boy,
subject to convulsive motions, indifferent to everybody
and everything, and biting and scratching
at all who resisted his will. The excellent
Abbé Sicard, the friend of the deaf and
dumb, considering that society had incurred
obligations to this poor creature that she was
bound to fulfil, entrusted him to the care of
M. Itard, the physician to the National Institution
of Deaf and Dumb. M. Pinel, a physician
profoundly skilled in diseases of the mind, drew
up a report of the state of intellect he found
existing in the wild boy of Aveyron.

Beginning with an account of the sensorial
functions of the young savage, Citizen Pinel
represented his senses as in such a state of inertia,
that this unfortunate youth was found, according
to his report, very inferior to some of our
domestic animals. His eyes were without steadiness,
without expression, wandering from one
object to another, without fixing upon anything;
so little instructed in other respects, and so
little experienced in the sense of touch, that he
was unable to distinguish between an object in
relief and a painting: the organ of hearing was
alike insensible to the loudest noises and to the
most charming music; that of the voice was
still more imperfect, uttering only a guttural
and uniform sound; his sense of smell was so
little cultivated, that he seemed to be equally
indifferent to the odour of the finest perfumes
and to the most fœtid exhalations; finally, the
sense of feeling was limited to those mechanical
functions which arose from the dread of objects
which might be in his way.

Proceeding to the state of the intellectual
faculties of this child, the author of the report
exhibited him as incapable of attention, and,
consequently, of all the operations of the mind
which depended upon attention; destitute of
memory, of judgment, even of a disposition to
imitation; and so bounded were his ideas, even
those which related to his immediate wants, that
he could not open a door, nor get on a chair to
obtain the food which was put out of the reach
of his hand; in short, having no means of
communication, attaching neither expression nor
intention to the gestures and motions of his body,
passing with rapidity and without any apparent
motive from a state of profound melancholy to
bursts of immoderate laughter; insensible to
every species of moral affection, his discernment
was never excited except by the stimulus
of gluttony; his pleasure, an agreeable sensation
of the organs of taste; his intelligence, a
susceptibility of producing incoherent ideas
connected with his physical wants; in a word,
his whole existence was a life purely animal.

Citizen Pinel ended by considering the boy's
state as exactly analogous to the idiot children
at the Bicêtre, and therefore unimprovable.

M. Itard was, however, wiser: he did not think
the case by any means hopeless. Still, it was
not encouraging. The boy was always trying
to escape into the woods. He smelt at
everything that came in his way. He tore open
with his nails a canary-bird that was given
him, stripped it of the feathers as if to eat
it, smelt at it with disapproval, then threw
it away. There were twenty-three scars upon
his body, some scratches and wounds from
thorns and branches, others the bites of animals.
He at first lived on potatoes and raw acorns,
and ate them, husks, rind and all. It was a long
time before he could be induced to lie in a bed.
The general supposition was that he had been
abandoned when he was five years old, and had
lived seven years in solitude in the woods.

M. Itard went to work with true French
mathematical precision, directing his efforts to five
primary points.

Firstly. To attach the wild boy to social life,
by rendering it more pleasant to him than that
which he was then leading, and, above all, more
analogous to the mode of existence that he was
about to quit.

Secondly. To awaken the nervous sensibility
by the most energetic stimulants, and
sometimes by lively affections of the mind.

Thirdly. To extend the sphere of his ideas,
by giving him new wants, and by increasing the
number of his relations to the objects
surrounding him.

Fourthly. To lead him to the use of speech
by subjecting him to the necessity of imitation.