Blair Collection > Celtic researches, on the origin, traditions & language, of the ancient Britons

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the society of each other^ in the enjoyment of happuiess, in
the full possession of all their hodily^ and of all their inteU
lectiuil, faculties, unexercised^ indeed, but mature^ and per-
fect, and with every possible aptitude for exercise. They
were endowed with a native impulse, which directed all
their powers to their proper end, — and tney had no savage
habits to overcome.
Such a distinction ought, unquestionably, to be made,
could we give implick, and full, credence to the facts, re-
lated of these two savages. But these facts demand a very
serious reconsideration. Common sense has a voice, more
persuasive than is that of a hundred philosophers. In this
inbtance, do we not hear it rebuke us, for drawing such nu-
gatory inferences, from absolute impossibilities? Is it not
the j)ostiiIati(m, a ridiculous absurdity, that an infant, de-
serted in a German, or French forest, before it acquired
any ideas of articulation, and consequently, before it could
walk, or stand upon its feet, ever did, or ever could support
its own existence? But did not a she uolf condescend once
to nurse Romulus, and Remus? might not a she wolf have
killed the mother of this child, and then have taken com-
passion upon the helpless orphan? Let one absurdity be al-
lowed the commodious privilege of resting upon another !
yet, in a very few months, the milk of tlie wolf must have
dried up, and the foster child have been abandoned, by force,
to the necessity of providing for its own sustenance, was the
infant then, arrived at a competent age, to follow the oc-
cupation of its nurse, to hunt for its daily food, and brave
the horrors of the approaching winter? As all this appears
to me an utter impossibility, I suppose, that, if there be
not some philosophical fraud in their history, these two
savages, notwithstanding their near approach to the human
form, were half brutes, the ofispring of abomination. In