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Various

"The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 39, January, 1861"

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.


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