[4] Mr. Whitworth's Special Report. CHAPTER I. Feeble resources of civilized man in a desert--Ross Cox, Peter the Wild Boy, and the Savage of Aveyron--A Moskito Indian on Juan Fernandez--Conditions necessary for the production of utility. Let us suppose a man brought up in civilized life, cast upon a desert land--without food, without clothes, without fire, without tools. We see the human being in the very lowest state of helplessness. Most of the knowledge he had acquired would be worse than useless; for it would not be applicable in any way to his new position. Let the land upon which he is thrown produce spontaneous fruits--let it be free from ferocious animals--let the climate be most genial--still the man would be exceedingly powerless and wretched. The first condition of his lot, to enable him to maintain existence at all, would be that he should labour. He must labour to gather the berries from the trees--he must labour to obtain water from the rivulets--he must labour to form a garment of leaves, or of some equally accessible material, to shield his body from the sun--he must labour to render some cave or hollow tree a secure place of shelter from the dews of night. There would be no intermission of the labour necessary to provide a supply of food from hand to mouth, even in the season when wild fruits were abundant. If this labour, in the most favourable season, were interrupted for a single day, or at most for two or three days, by sickness, he would in all probability perish. But, when the autumn was past, and the wild fruits were gone, he must prolong existence as some savage tribes are reported to do--by raw fish and undressed roots. The labour of procuring these would be infinitely greater than that of climbing trees for fruit. To catch fish without nets, and scratch up roots with naked hands, is indeed painful toil. The helplessness of this man's condition would principally be the effect of one circumstance;--he would possess no accumulation of former labour by which his present labour might be profitably directed. _The power of labour would in his case be in its least productive state._ He would partly justify the assertion that man has the feeblest natural means of any animal;--because he would be utterly unpossessed of those means which the reason of man has accumulated around every individual in the social state. We asked the reader to _suppose_ a civilized man in the very lowest state in which the power of labour may be exercised, because there is no record of any civilized man being for any length of time in such a state.