The Awakening of the Soul

The protagonist Hayy ibn Yaqzan grows up from infancy to adulthood on a uninhabited island. Essentially he is a feral or wild child. The infant Hayy is discovered and nurtured by a doe, fed on doe's milk. By presenting this prototype human being as a solitary, a social tabula rasa, Ibn Tufayl can show his reader how reason guides the human intellect naturally and that learning follows the same logical path identified by the methods of the philosophers. Moreover, the solitude of the uninhabited island is a model of the natural development of the mind in the absence of the diversions and distractions of society. (From the introduction)