, 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 p