Editing Victor of Aveyron (section)

===Influence of the Enlightenment===
[[Age of Enlightenment|The Enlightenment]] caused many thinkers, including naturalists and philosophers, to believe human nature was a subject that needed to be redefined and looked at from a completely different angle. Because of the [[French Revolution]] and new developments in science and philosophy, humans were looked at not as special but as characteristic of their place in nature.<ref name="shattuck">{{cite book
 |last= Shattuck
 |first= Roger
 |year= 1980
 |title= The Forbidden Experiment
 |url= https://archive.org/details/forbiddenexperim00shat
 |url-access= registration
 |location= New York
 |publisher= Farrar Straus Giroux
|isbn= 9780374157555
 }}</ref>{{rp|42}} It was hoped that by studying the wild boy, this idea would gain support. As such, Victor became a case study in the Enlightenment debate about the differences between humans and other animals.

At that time, the scientific category ''Juvenis averionensis'' was used, as a special case of the ''Homo ferus'',<ref name="Seguin1866">{{cite book|last=Séguin|first=Édouard |author-link=Édouard Séguin|title=Idiocy: and Its Treatment by the Physiological Method|url=https://archive.org/details/idiocyanditstre00segugoog|year=1866|publisher=W. Wood & Company|page=[https://archive.org/details/idiocyanditstre00segugoog/page/n27 17]}}</ref> described by [[Carl Linnaeus]] in ''[[Systema Naturae]]''. Linnaeus and his discoveries, then, forced people to ask the question, "What makes us [human]?" Another developing idea prevalent during the Enlightenment was that of the [[noble savage]]. Some believed a person existing in the pure state of nature would be "gentle, innocent, a lover of solitude, ignorant of evil and incapable of causing intentional harm."<ref name="Benzaquén2006">{{cite book|last=Benzaquén|first=Adriana S. |title=Encounters with Wild Children: Temptation and Disappointment in the Study of Human Nature|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=W_l1_EtFWzoC&pg=PA163|date=5 April 2006|publisher=MQUP|isbn=978-0-7735-8085-5|page=163}}</ref>

Philosophies proposed by [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Rousseau]], [[John Locke|Locke]] and [[René Descartes|Descartes]] were evolving around the time the boy was discovered in France in 1800. These philosophies invariably influenced the way the boy was perceived by others, and eventually, how Itard would structure his education.