I was, besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same nature as man.

I was more agile than they and could subsist upon coarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to my frame; my stature far exceeded theirs.

When I looked around I saw and heard of none like me.

Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?
"I cannot describe to you the agony that these reflections inflicted upon me; I tried to dispel them, but sorrow only increased with knowledge.

Oh, that I had forever remained in my native wood, nor known nor felt beyond the sensations of hunger, thirst, and heat! "Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on the rock.