The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 39, January, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 39, January, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
"Finally, the man appeared once again, placed Caspar's hands over his
shoulders, tied them fast, and thus carried him on his back out of the
prison. He was carried up (or down) a hill. He knows not how he felt;
all became night, and he was laid upon his back."--By the expression,
"all became night," he meant that he fainted away. The little which
Caspar was able to relate in regard to his journey is not of any
particular interest, and we omit it here.
This is all that is known with any certainty of the early life of this
unfortunate being. The conjectures to which it has given rise will be
considered later. Let us first finish his history.
As was to be expected, Caspar Hauser's faculties developed very
gradually. His mind was in a torpor, and, placed suddenly amid, to
him, most exciting scenes, it was long before he could understand the
simplest phenomena of Nature. The unfolding of his mind was exactly like
that of a child. Feuerbach, in his book on Caspar Hauser, gives the main
features of this gradual development. We can only pick out a few.
It is remarkable that in the same proportion as he advanced in knowledge
and acquaintance with civilized life, the intensity of all his faculties
diminished. It was so with his memory. He was at first able to exhibit
most surprising feats. As an experiment, thirty, forty, and, on one
occasion, forty-five names of persons were mentioned to him, which he
afterwards repeated with all their titles,--to him, of course, entirely
meaningless. So, too, with his power of sight. At first, he was able to
see in the dark perfectly well, and much better than in the light of the
sun, which was very painful to him. He very frequently amused himself
at others groping in the dark, when he experienced not the slightest
difficulty. On one occasion, in the evening, he read the name on a
door-plate at the distance of one hundred and eighty paces. This
keenness of vision did not, however, retain its entire vigor, but
decreased as he became more accustomed to the sun. For some time after
he made his appearance he had no idea of perspective, but would clutch
like a child at objects far off. Nor had he any conception of the
beauties of Nature, which he afterwards explained by saying that it then
appeared to him like a mass of colors jumbled together. Nothing was
beautiful, unless it was red, except a starry heaven,--and the emotion
which he felt, on first beholding this, was truly touching. Until then,
he had invariably spoken of "the man with whom he had always been" with
feelings of affection; he longed to return to him, and looked upon all
his studies as merely a temporary thing; some day he would go back and
show the man how much he had learned. But when he first looked upon the
heavens, his tone became entirely changed, and he denounced the man
severely for never having shown him such beautiful things.
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