Translations:Victor of Aveyron/84/en

Contemplated in the earliest stage of his infancy, and regarding his understanding, the man appears not as yet elevated above other animals. All his intellectual faculties are rigorously circumscribed within the narrow sphere of his physical wants. It is to them alone that the operations of his understanding are directed. It behooves us then, in education, to make use of these wants for his instruction; that is to say, to a new order of things that have no original connection with them. From this application flow all his knowledge, all the improvement of his mind, and even the conceptions of the most sublime genius. Whatever degree of probability there may be in this idea, I bring it forward here again, only as it is the point of departure from the line of conduct which I have hitherto pursued. T shall not enter minutely into a detail of the means that were made use of, to exercise the intellectual faculties of the Savage of Aveyron, concerning the objects of his appetites. These means consisted simply in placing between him and his wants, obstacles that are continually increasing, and continually changing in their nature, and which he could not surmount without perpetually exercising his attention, his memory, his judgment, and all the functions of his senses*.