eed strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man's estate, is the gift of nature. This education comes to us from nature, from men, or from things . . . God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil"(page 143). This allows society to view the creature with supernatural awe, repulsed at nature's most dreadful characters, decay and death, even when they form life.The development of the creature was molded by nature, as a harsh school master, she exercised the creature's expanding mind while punishing the newly formed body. "It was dark when I awoke; I felt cold also, and half frightened, as it were, instinctively, . . . I was a poor, helpless, miserable wretch; I knew, and could distinguish, nothing; but feeling pain invade me on all sides, I sat down and wept"(99). Rousseau said, "Man is born to suffer, pain is the means of his preservation"(145). And thus it is with the creature, nature schooled him with cruel elements and treatments, yet slowly the creature developed several instinctual behaviors and began to delight in the nature that surrounded him. "I began also to observe, with greater accuracy, the forms that surrounded me, and to perceive the boundaries of the radiant roof of light which canopied me"(100). His actions were simple, in harmony with nature, it was not until his encounter with a society which held nature in reverence and saw the grotesque as unnatural. "I arrived at a village . . . But I had hardly placed my foot within the door before the children shrieked, and one of the women fainted . . . The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me, until, grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons, I escaped to the open country"(102). Rousseau stated: "Give your pupil no verbal lessons; he should be taught by experience alone"(153). Shelley developed the creature in nature, tutored only by ...
