11.  Brutes abstract not, yet are nor bare machines.

Nor can it be imputed to their want of fit organs to frame articulate sounds, that they have no use or knowledge of general words; since many of them, we find, can fashion such sounds, and pronounce words distinctly enough, but never with any such application.  And, on the other side, men who, through some defect in the organs, want words, yet fail not to express their universal ideas by signs, which serve them instead of general words, a faculty which we see beasts come short in.  And, therefore, I think, we may suppose, that it is in this that the species of brutes are discriminated from man:  and it is that proper difference wherein they are wholly separated, and which at last widens to so vast a distance.  For if they have any ideas at all, and are not bare machines, (as some would have them,) we cannot deny them to have some reason.  It seems as evident to me, that they do reason, as that they have sense; but it is only in particular ideas, just as they received them from their senses.  They are the best of them tied up within those narrow bounds, and have not (as I think) the faculty to enlarge them by any kind of abstraction. 12.  Idiots and Madmen.

How far idiots are concerned in the want or weakness of any, or all of the foregoing faculties, an exact observation of their several ways of faultering would no doubt discover.  For those who either perceive but dully, or retain the ideas that come into their minds but ill, who cannot readily excite or compound them, will have little matter to think on.  Those who cannot distinguish, compare, and abstract, would hardly be able to understand and make use of language, or judge or reason to any tolerable degree; but only a little and imperfectly about things present, and very familiar to their senses.  And indeed any of the forementioned faculties, if wanting, or out of order, produce suitable defects in men’s understandings and knowledge.

13.  Difference between Idiots and Madmen.

In fine, the defect in naturals seems to proceed from want of quickness, activity, and motion in the intellectual faculties, whereby they are deprived of reason; whereas madmen, on the other side, seem to suffer by the other extreme.  For they do not appear to me to have lost the faculty of reasoning, but having joined together some ideas very wrongly, they mistake them for truths; and they err as men do that argue right from wrong principles.  For, by the violence of their imaginations, having taken their fancies for realities, they make right deductions from them.  Thus you shall find a distracted man fancying himself a king, with a right inference require suitable attendance, respect, and obedience:  others who have thought themselves made of glass, have used the caution necessary to preserve such brittle bodies.  Hence it comes to pass that a man who is very sober, and of a right understanding in all other things, may in one particular