most always scrofulous, have hanging lips, a thick tongue, swollen neck, bad general constitution, and an unsteady gait; they are more or less completely idiots, and have commonly been exposed and left to the care of Providence, having been found burdens by their parents. In some countries, the lower classes consider such unhappily-constituted creatures as bewitched, and take no care of them. Idiots too have sometimes a determinate propensity to live alone, and consequently escape to the woods. At Haina, near Marbourg, where there is a great hospital, Dr. Gall and I were told, that on sending people to search for some idiots who had escaped, others were found who had fled from different places. We saw a mad woman near Augsburg, who had been found in a wood. At Brunswick we saw a woman also found in a forest, who was incapable of pronouncing a single word. The pretended savage of Aveyron, kept in the institution of the Deaf and Dumb at Paris, is an idiot in a high degree. His forehead is very small, and much compressed in the superior part; his eyes are small, and lie deep in the orbits, and we could not convince ourselves that he hears; for he paid no attention to our calls, nor to the sound of a glass struck behind him. He stands and sits decently, but moves his head and body incessantly from side to side. He knows several written signs and words, and points out the objects noted by them. His most remarkable instinct, however, is love of order; for, as soon as any thing is displaced in the room, he goes and puts it to rights.

Such unfortunate beings, then, are idiots, not because they are uneducated, but because their imbecility unfits them to receive education. It is difficult to conceive a well-organized person long wandering about like a savage in our populous countries without being discovered. Were such an individual, however, to escape in infancy, and be afterwards discovered in a forest, though he could not be acquainted with our manners, and the sciences we teach, he would still manifest the essential and characteristic faculties of the human kind, and would soon imitate our customs and receive our instructions. The girl of Champaigne proves this assertion.

Thus, education produces no faculty either in man or in animals; but let us not conclude that education is superfluous. My ideas on education are published in a separate volume, and I only remark here that it excites, exercises, determines the application, and prevents the abuses of the innate faculties; and that on this account it is of the highest importance. Mechanics and peasants, confined to their laborious occupations, are frequently ignorant; but many of them, with a good education, might surpass thousands of those who have enjoyed its advantages.

From the preceding considerations on external circumstances, it results, that they either present opportunities which favor the activity of the faculties, or excite and guide, but do not in any wise produce them.

I shall now consider the share Nature has in originating the powers of man and animals, in the following chapter.

CHAPTER IV.

On the Innateness of the Mental Dispositions.

Let us see now what is innate. The fundamental powers of the mind, as well as the organization on which their manifestations depend, are given to man by the Creator. The constancy of human nature affords the first proof of this position. The human kind, in as far as its history is known, has ever been the same, not only as regards organic, but also as concerns phrenic life. The skeletons of ancient mummies are the very same as those of the men at the present day; and all ages have exhibited virtues and vices essentially similar. Thus, the special faculties of man have ever been the same; the only difference observable at different times, is, that they have been more or less active, and variously modified in individuals. Here one has unjustly seized a piece of

ground, there a place of distinction; here mistresses have been celebrated on an oaten-reed, there on a harp; conquerors in one quarter have been decorated with feathers, in another with purple and crowns, and so on; these modifications are, however, all grounded upon primitive faculties essentially the same. And man, though endowed with proper and peculiar faculties, still receives them from creation; the truly human nature is as determinate as the nature of every other being. Though man compares his sensations and ideas, inquires into the causes of phenomena, draws consequences, discovers laws and general principles, measures immense distances and times, and circumnavigates the globe; though he acknowledges culpability and worthiness, bears a monitor in his interior, and raises his mind to conceive and to adore a God,-yet none of the faculties which cause these acts result either from accidental external influences or from his own will. How indeed could the Creator abandon and give man up to chance in the noblest and most important of all his doings? Impossible! Here, as in all besides, he has prescribed laws to man, and guided his steps in a determinate path. He has secured the continuance of the same essential faculties in the human kind,-faculties whose existence we should never have conceived had the Creator not bestowed them upon us.

The uniformity of the essential faculties of mankind, notwithstanding the influence of society, climate, modes of living, laws, religion, education, and fortuitous events, affords another great proof that nothing can change the institutions of nature. We every where find the same species; whether man clothe himself or go naked, fight with slings or artillery, stain his skin, or powder his hair, dance to the sound of a drum or the music of a concert, adore the sun, moon, and stars, or in his religion be guided by Christian principles, his special faculties are universally the same.

I have also spoken of genius, in order to prove that education does not produce our faculties, and mentioned that children often show peculiar faculties before they have received any kind of instruction. External circumstances are sometimes very unfavorable

to the exhibition of genius; but gifted individuals do not always wait for opportunities, they even make them, and leave parents, professions, and all behind, to be at liberty to follow their natural inclinations. Moses, David, Tamerlane, and Pope Sixtus the Fifth, were shepherds; Socrates, Pythagoras, Theophrastus, Demosthenes, Moliere, Rousseau, and a thousand others, who have lived to adorn the world, were the sons of artificers. Geniuses sometimes surmount great difficulties, and vanquish innumerable impediments, before their character prevails and they assume their natural place. Such individuals, prevented by circumstances from following their natural bent, still find their favorite amusement in pursuing it. Hence peasants, shepherds, and artisans, have become astronomers, poets, and philosophers; and, on the other hand, kings, and prime ministers, employed themselves in the mechanical arts; all, indeed, unites to prove the innateness of the primitive mental faculties.

Men of genius, however, have been said to form a particular class, and to be incomparable with persons whose faculties are of middling excellence.

This, however, is the same as saying that hunger and circulation do not depend on organization, because all have not immoderate appetite and fever; or that the mole does not see with its eyes, because the stag sees better; or that man has no smell, since the dog's is superior. But, if we admit that organization causes the highest degree of activity of the different faculties, the lowest degree must also depend on it. Moreover, the greatest genius in one particular is often very weak in others. William Crotch, at six years of age, astonished all who heard him by his musical talents; but in every other respect he was a child. Cæsar could never have become a Horace or a Virgil, nor Alexander a Homer. Newton could not have been changed into so great a poet as he was an astronomer; nor Milton into so great an astronomer as he was a poet. Nay, Michael Angelo could not have composed the pictures of Raphael, or the contrary; nor Albano those of Titian, and so on.

The mental faculties again must be innate, since, although essentially the same in both sexes, they present modifications in each. Some are more energetic in women, others in men. The feelings are, in general, stronger in women, the intellectual faculties more active in men. These modifications inhere naturally, and it is impossible to give to one sex the dispositions of the other.

We may add, that in every nation, notwithstanding the uniformity of its opinions, customs, professions, arts, sciences, laws, religion, and all its positive institutions, each individual composing it differs from every other by some peculiarity of character. Each has greater capacity and inclination in one than in another direction, and even in childhood manifests his own manner of thinking and feeling. Every one excuses his frailties by saying, It is my nature; it is stronger than I; I cannot help it, &c. Even brothers and sisters often differ extremely, though their education is uniform. The cause of difference, must, therefore, be internal.

The innateness of the faculties must also be admitted, because there is a direct relation between their manifestations and a certain organic apparatus.

Finally, if we believe that man is a being of creation, it is only rational to suppose that his faculties are determinate and ordained. I consequently, with all these considerations in view, contend for the innateness of every faculty of the mind. But here it is of importance to notice an observation of Locke upon innateness. He, to show that ideas are not innate, stated that children do not manifest certain qualities, and that different nations have different, nay, opposite principles of morality. This position, however, in relation to the innateness of ideas and moral principles, must not be confounded with the innateness of the faculties. No sensation, no idea, no principle, is innate. Sensations and ideas of external objects follow from external impressions, and these being accidental, ideas of them cannot be innate; but the faculties which perceive impressions, and conceive ideas, are innate. Thus the idea of a stone, plant, or animal, is not innate; but these objects make impressions on the senses, which produce sensations or ideas in the mind, and