society. He is now, we remember, at the end of his twenty-first year, and our obvious comment is that he is well advanced for his age. With his return to civilized life, the story properly closes; but the author of the second work—the 'History of Automathes'—adds something on his own account to clinch the moral. The immense progress which the youth was able, by himself, to make was not, we are asked to recollect, due to inward natural capacity. Had he been thrown entirely on his own resources after his father's departure—had he, that is, been deprived of the various aids his father left behind him—he would inevitably have perished, or, surviving, have sunk to the level of the brutes. In such a condition the race at large would have remained in default of assistance from without. Hence, argues the author, civilization must have depended, at the first, upon supernatural revelation. Particularly must this have been the case, he further insists— though the history of Autonous (or Automathes) hardly sustains the contention—with all religious knowledge. We must, therefore, assume a primeval revelation to all men, shadows and survivals of which are to be found in heathen mythologies and extra-Christian speculations.[1]
It is almost a pity, we are tempted to say, as we lay the strange little book aside, that Autonous was rescued just when he was. Having on his own account discovered so many things which it has taken humanity thousands of years to find out, he might, had he been left alone, have pushed his researches into who knows what fresh domains of science, theoretical and applied. Or perhaps, it may be suggested, his achievements were, after all, due to his peculiar conditions—to abandon a child on an uninhabited island may, in other words, be the very best way of developing his faculties. In an age which has already gone wild over educational theories, some one may be glad to take this idea under consideration.
More serious comment is unnecessary. Our brief outline will have sufficed to show the extravagance of Autonous's story, the clumsiness of its machinery and its general lack of plausibility. Its further weakness as a culture-study—the introduction of too many human aids to mental growth—will also be equally apparent; though this is probably referable to the author's realization of the impossibility of getting on without such assistance, as testified in the actual case of the then famous Wild Boy of Germany. But the little book does open up a number of fascinating questions, and, in closing it, we may well ask why, in these days of scientific and psychological fiction, some novelist in search of fresh material does not try his hand on what is surely a not uninteresting or unfruitful theme.
- ↑ Compare Dryden, 'Introduction to Religio Laici.'
