10. Brutes have memory.
This faculty of laying up and retaining the ideas that are brought into the mind, several
other animals seem to have to a great degree, as well as man. For, to pass by other instances, birds learning of
tunes, and the endeavours one may observe in them to hit the notes right, put it past doubt with me, that they have
perception, and retain ideas in their memories, and use them for patterns. For it seems to me impossible that they
should endeavour to conform their voices to notes (as it is plain they do) of which they had no ideas. For, though I
should grant sound may mechanically cause a certain motion of the animal spirits in the brains of those birds,
whilst the tune is actually playing; and that motion may be continued on to the muscles of the wings, and so the
bird mechanically be driven away by certain noises, because this may tend to the bird's preservation; yet that can
never be supposed a reason why it should cause mechanically--either whilst the tune is playing, much less after it
has ceased--such a motion of the organs in the bird's voice as should conform it to the notes of a foreign sound,
which imitation can be of no use to the bird's preservation. But, which is more, it cannot with any appearance of
reason be supposed (much less proved) that birds, without sense and memory, can approach their notes nearer and
nearer by degrees to a tune played yesterday; which if they have no idea of in their memory, is now nowhere, nor
can be a pattern for them to imitate, or which any repeated essays can bring them nearer to. Since there is no
reason why the sound of a pipe should leave traces in their brains, which, not at first, but by their
after-endeavours, should produce the like sounds; and why the sounds they make themselves, should not make
traces which they should follow, as well as those of the pipe, is impossible to conceive.
