LETTERS TO BROTHER JOHN. 19 



s, aAA.a n Kpsirrov. " The beginning of 

 reason is not reason ; but something better." 



I have mentioned the reasoning powers of 

 brutes. No one, I think, of the present day, who 

 is accustomed to read, and think, and take note of 

 the habits of animals, will deny their possession of 

 this faculty. Every thing which remembers, and 

 regulates its conduct by this remembrance, per- 

 forms an act of reason. Why should they not 

 reason ? And that man owes his superiority of 

 reasoning power to his faculty of speech, is most 

 strikingly and irresistibly proved by the effect of 

 the press. What is printing, but an extension of the 

 powers of speaking? enabling a man, without 

 moving from his native soil, to put his antipodes in 

 possession of every new idea he acquires ; so that 

 what one acquires is acquired by all; thus multi- 

 plying the still newer ideas to which this newly- 

 acquired one may give rise, by nearly the whole 

 number of the reading inhabitants of the world : 

 for almost every man will probably derive, from 

 the combination of this new idea with one which 

 he already possesses, another new idea ; and this 

 other new idea is again told to the world through 

 the press, and its results again multiplied as before. 

 The first possession of the faculty of speech did not 



