_MADAM,_
When your Author discourseth of the use of _Speech or Words and Names_,
he is pleas'd to say,[1] _That their use is to serve for marks and
notes of Remembrance_; Whereof to give you my opinion, I say, That
Speech is natural to the shape of Man; and though sometimes it serves
for marks or notes of remembrance, yet it doth not always, for all
other Animals have Memory without the help of Speech, and so have deaf
and dumb men, nay more then those that hear and speak: Wherefore,
though Words are useful to the mind, and so to the memory, yet both
can be without them, whereas Words cannot be without Memory; for take
a Bird, and teach him to speak, if he had not Memory, before he heard
the words, he could never learn them. You will ask me, _Madam_, What
then, is Memory the Cause of Speech? I answer, Life and Knowledg, which
is Sense and Reason, as it creates and makes all sorts of Creatures,
so also amongst the rest it makes Words: And as I said before, that
Memory may be without the help of Speech or Words, so I say also, that
there is a possibility of reckoning of numbers, as also of magnitudes,
of swiftness, of force, and other things without words, although your
Author denies it: But some men are so much for Art, as they endeavour
to make Art, which is onely a Drudgery-maid of Nature, the chief
Mistress, and Nature her Servant, which is as much as to prefer Effects
before the Cause, Nature before God, Discord before Unity and Concord.
Again, your _Author_, in his Chapter of Reason,[2] defines _Reason_ to
be nothing else but _Reckoning_: I answer, That in my opinion Reckoning
is not Reason it self, but onely an effect or action of Reason; for
Reason, as it is the chiefest and purest degree of animate matter,
works variously and in divers motions, by which it produces various
and divers effects, which are several Perceptions, as Conception,
Imagination, Fancy, Memory, Remembrance, Understanding, Judgment,
Knowledg, and all the Passions, with many more: Wherefore this Reason
is not in one undivided part, nor bound to one motion, for it is in
every Creature more or less, and moves in its own parts variously; and
in some Creatures, as for example, in some men, it moves more variously
then in others, which is the cause that some men are more dull and
stupid, then others; neither doth Reason always move in one Creature
regularly, which is the cause, that some men are mad or foolish: And
though all men are made by the direction of Reason, and endued with
Reason, from the first time of their birth, yet all have not the like
Capacities, Understandings, Imaginations, Wits, Fancies, Passions,
&c. but some more, some less, and some regular, some irregular,
according to the motions of Reason or Rational part of animate matter;
and though some rational parts may make use of other rational Parts,
as one man of another mans Conceptions, yet all these parts cannot
associate together; as for example, all the Material parts of several
objects, no not their species, cannot enter or touch the eye without
danger of hurting or loosing it, nevertheless the eye makes use of the
objects by patterning them out, and so doth the rational matter, by
taking patterns from the sensitive; And thus knowledg or perception of
objects, both sensitive and rational, is taken without the pressure of
any other parts; for though parts joyn to parts, (for no part can be
single) yet this joining doth not necessarily infer the pressure of
objects upon the sensitive organs; Whereof I have already discoursed
sufficiently heretofore, to which I refer you, and rest
Madam,
_Your faithful Friend_
_and Servant._
[1] _Leviathan, part._ 1. _c._ 4.
[2] _Ch._ 5.