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.
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