It is remarkable that in the same proportion as he advanced in knowledge and acquaintance with civilized life, the intensity of all his faculties diminished.  It was so with his memory.  He was at first able to exhibit most surprising feats.  As an experiment, thirty, forty, and, on one occasion, forty-five names of persons were mentioned to him, which he afterwards repeated with all their titles,—­to him, of course, entirely meaningless.  So, too, with his power of sight.  At first, he was able to see in the dark perfectly well, and much better than in the light of the sun, which was very painful to him.  He very frequently amused himself at others groping in the dark, when he experienced not the slightest difficulty.  On one occasion, in the evening, he read the name on a door-plate at the distance of one hundred and eighty paces.  This keenness of vision did not, however, retain its entire vigor, but decreased as he became more accustomed to the sun.  For some time after he made his appearance he had no idea of perspective, but would clutch like a child at objects far off.  Nor had he any conception of the beauties of Nature, which he afterwards explained by saying that it then appeared to him like a mass of colors jumbled together.  Nothing was beautiful, unless it was red, except a starry heaven,—­and the emotion which he felt, on first beholding this, was truly touching.  Until then, he had invariably spoken of “the man with whom he had always been” with feelings of affection; he longed to return to him, and looked upon all his studies as merely a temporary thing; some day he would go back and show the man how much he had learned.  But when he first looked upon the heavens, his tone became entirely changed, and he denounced the man severely for never having shown him such beautiful things.

All his senses were thus at first wonderfully keen.  It was so with his hearing and smell.  The latter was the source of most of his sufferings; for, being so exceedingly sensitive, even the most scentless things made him sick.  He liked but one smell, that of bread, which had been his only food for seventeen years.  It was a long time, indeed, before he could take any other food at all, and he only became accustomed to it very gradually.

The effect produced upon Caspar Hauser by contact with or proximity to animals was also very curious.  He was able to detect their presence under singularly unfavorable circumstances.  Metals, too, had a very powerful effect upon him, and possessed for him a strong magnetic power.  But it is impossible to give all the details, however interesting; for them we must refer to Feuerbach.

His mind, as has been already said, was at first sunk in almost impenetrable darkness.  He knew of but two divisions of earthly things,—­man and beast, “bua” and “ross.”  The former was a word of his own.  The latter, which is the German for horse, included everything not human, whether animate or inanimate.  Between these he for a long time saw no difference.  He could not understand why pictures and statues did not move, and he regarded his toy-horses as living things.  To inanimate things impelled by foreign forces he ascribed volition.