'He
did not know where he came from.' Certainly Merk, in 1834, remembered
much more than in 1829. Whether he suppressed facts in 1829, or, in
1834, invented fables, we do not know. The cavalry captain (November
2, 1829) remembered several intelligent remarks made by Kaspar. His
dress was new and clean (denied by Feuerbach), he was tired and
footsore. The evidence of the police, taken in 1834, was remote in
time, but went to prove that Kaspar's eyesight and power of writing
were normal. Feuerbach absolutely discredits all the sworn evidence of
1829, without giving his own sources. The early evidence shows that
Kaspar could both walk and talk, and see normally, by artificial and
natural light, all of which is absolutely inconsistent with Kaspar's
later account of himself.
The personal property of Kaspar was a horn rosary, and several
Catholic tracts with prayers to the Guardian Angel, and so forth.
Feuerbach holds that these were furnished by 'devout villains'--a very
sound Protestant was Feuerbach--and that Kaspar was ignorant of the
being of a Deity, at least of a Protestant Deity. The letter carried
by the boy said that the writer first took charge of him, as an
infant, in 1812, and had never let him 'take a single step out of my
house.
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