List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Wild Children: Establishing the Boundaries of Nature and Science2. The Animated Statue and the Plasticity of Mankind3. Compromised Idylls: Natural Man and Woman Encultured4. Raising the Rational Child: Real-Life Experiments and Alternatives to Rousseau5. Perfectibility in the Revolutionary Era: Utopian Politics and Dystopian FictionsEpilogue: Monstrous ImperfectionNotesIndex