ars ago, and who
resorted to such extreme measures in doing so, no doubt took ample
precaution that every trace should be erased. It is barely possible that
some confession or the discovery of some paper may cast light upon the
subject; but the length of time which has elapsed renders it exceedingly
improbable, and the mystery of Caspar Hauser, like the mysteries of the
Iron Mask and Junius, will always remain a fruitful source of conjecture
only.

It may not be uninteresting to close this sketch with the consideration
of a point of law raised by Feuerbach in connection with the subject. It
will be recollected that he calls his book "Caspar Hauser. An Example
of a Crime against the Life of Man's Soul." The crime committed against
Caspar Hauser was, according to the Bavarian code, twofold. There was
the crime of _illegal imprisonment_, and the crime of _exposure_. And
here Feuerbach advances the doctrine, that it was not only the actual
confinement which amounted to illegal imprisonment, but that "we must
incontestably, and, indeed, principally, regard as such the cruel
withholding from him of the most ordinary gifts which Nature with a
liberal hand extends even to the most indigent,--the depriving him
of all the means of mental development and culture,--the unnatural
detention of a human soul in a state of irrational animality." "An
attempt," he says, "by artificial contrivances, to seclude a man from
Nature and from all intercourse with rational beings, to change
the course of his human destiny, and to withdraw from him all the
nourishment afforded by those spiritual substances which Nature has
appointed for food to the human mind, that it may grow and flourish,
and be instructed and developed and formed,--such an attempt must, even
quite independently of its actual consequences, be considered as,
in itself, a highly criminal invasion of man's most sacred and most
peculiar property,--of the freedom and the destiny of his soul.
...Inasmuch as the whole earlier part of his life was thus taken from
him, he may be said to have been the subject of a partial soul-murder."
This crime, if recognized, would, according to Feuerbach, far outweigh
the mere crime of illegal imprisonment, and the latter would be merged
in it.

Tittmann, in his "Hand-Book of Penal Law," also speaks of crimes against
the intellect, and particularly mentions the separation of a person from
all human society, if practised upon a child before it has le