Translations:Victor of Aveyron/20/en

Deprived of these advantages, the rest of the children found in a state of individual insulation, brought into society faculties. This history, although it is very circumstantial, is nevertheless so ill-told, that if one were to deduce from it, in the first place, what is insignificant, and, in the next, what is incredible, it presents only a tiny number of particulars deserving notice; the most remarkable of which is the faculty which this young savage possessed, of recalling to her memory the circumstances of her previous condition that were completely insusceptible, which must baffle, supposing that they were directed towards their education, all the united efforts of a moral philosophy scarcely in its infancy, still untrammeled with the prejudice of innate ideas, and by theories of medicine, the views of which, being necessarily contracted by a doctrine altogether mechanical, could not rise to philosophical reflections regarding the maladies of the understanding. Assisted by the light of analysis, and lending to each other mutual support, these two sciences have in our days gotten rid of their old errors and made immense progress towards perfection. On this account, we have reason to hope, that, if ever a similar individual is presented to those of whom we have been speaking, they would employ, to produce his physical and moral development, all the resources to be derived from their actual knowledge: or, at least, if this application proved impossible or fruitless, there would be found in this age of observation someone individual, who, carefully collecting the history of a being so astonishing, would ascertain what he is, and would infer, from what is wanting to him, the sum, as yet not calculated, of that knowledge and of those ideas for which man is indebted to his education.