Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/289

Rh that he had been alarmed by his 'own Image and Resemblance.' From this, he makes a sudden leap into theories concerning himself and the manner in which he and the dog had got to be where they are; and recalling what he had already noted of the 'usual method by which all other living creatures propagated their likes/ he sapiently infers that their own coming into the world must have been after the same fashion. All this must have happened, he believed, when he was about ten years of age.

The notion that he must have had a beginning somewhere, and that, though he was now living entirely alone, he was really in some inscrutable way linked to his kind, is now confirmed by an examination of his cottage, which up to the present he has accepted uninquiringly and as a mere matter of course. Comparing it with the dwellings of the beavers on the lake-shore, he guessed that it must have been built by predecessors of his own and arranged for their comfort and protection. The remains of one of the ship's boats, decaying on the strand, are, moreover, caught up in his speculation, suggesting transportation, and hinting, if at first rather vaguely, at a great human world out of which he has been cast. "But what," exclaims Autonous, "is the Beginning of Reason but the Beginning of Sorrow to creatures whose Reason can only serve to discover their Wants and Imperfections to them?" His tranquillity—the tranquillity of mere animal existence— is at an end. His mind broods continually over the 'Thoughts of Human Society,' without which he feels there can be no happiness for him, or even peace. He watches the birds and beasts, and envies their social lot. Had the boat been in sufficient repair, he feels that he might even have started off in the wild hope of finding somebody somewhere. "So strong an Inclination has Nature implanted in us for the Conversation of our Fellow-Creatures, in order to communicate our joys and griefs and sympathize under one another's sufferings."

Despite this heart-hunger, Autonous now enters on the high-road of intellectual progress. He begins to observe with close attention the growth of trees, grass and flowers, and the dependence of all animal life upon the fertility of the soil. Thus far we can without much difficulty keep up with him. But from this point he goes forward with such leaps and bounds that we are left almost breathless in our efforts to follow. For now he notes how the 'successive Renewals of Nature' exactly correspond with 'the Motions of the Sun,' and the agreement between the phases of the moon and the tides. The revolutions of 'the lesser heavenly luminaries' also become the subject of his 'nocturnal Contemplations'; moreover, he studies the rainbow, and discovers the 'necessity of Eain and the solar Heat' to 'ripen the Fruits of the Earth/

Nor are these the only, or the most astonishing, results of his