pre-AS Aspie

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I found another undiagnosed Aspie in a story written long before Asperger's Syndrome was identified.

G.K.Chesterton's "A Crazy Tale" (The Quarto v.3, London 1897) is the narrative of a perspicacious young man who has spent his entire life in a "fantastic borderland of things" with perceptions wholly lacking in cultural perspective. He concludes that he is " a new animal with eyes to see and ears to hear; with an intellect capable of performing a new function never before conceived truly" and that "I am the first that ever saw in the world. Prophets and sages there have been, out of whose great hearts came schools and churches. But I am the first that ever saw a dandelion as it is."

Is anyone here familiar with the story? I'd be interested in your interpretation.

You're much better read than me, so I can't comment. There is a portrait of a boy in one of Joseph Conrad's novels [Think it was "the Secret Agent" c.1900], which immediately struck me as AS.