This keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership. Searching, reading, printing, or downloading EEBO-TCP texts is reserved for the authorized users of these project partner institutions. Permission must be granted for subsequent distribution, in print or electronically, of this text, in whole or in part. Please contact project staff at eebotcp-info@umich.edu for further information or permissions.
WEE know nothing (saith the Verulanian Oracle) that can at pleasure make a Musicall or Immusi∣call sound by voluntary motion, but the Voice of Man and Birds. By Speech which is an immusicall Sound, framed
by the Motion of the Tongue and Lips, Man hath a prerogative of expressing his Mind: To Speake being nothing else, but by certaine Motiuncles of the Mouth to open our Cogitations to o∣thers in Words proceeding from the Conjugations of Letters, whereof our Speech consists. Letters the true Ele∣ments of Speech being made of Moti∣ons, nay being nothing else but locall motions of the parts of the Mouth, it being in vain for any man, opening his Mouth, and uttering out his breath, to strive to speake without moveing his Lips and Tongue: For, the other in∣struments of Speech although they con∣curre with the Moveable parts, yet be∣cause not moved, are not reckoned a∣mong the cheife Causes and Authors of Speech; since the very Tongue and Lips, which were made very Moveable and Voluble to this end, are not accoun∣ted the chiefe instruments of Speech, and first causes of Articulation, but qua∣tenus they are moved. And they are Moveable in as much as they have ob∣tained a Faculty of Moving, and are Muscules, which are the Adequate Or∣gans
of voluntary Motion. For Speech is a voluntary Action and free, and may be made or restrained according to our arbitriment, and wee at pleasure can either speake or hold our peace: And therefore it is performed by Muscules, which are Arbitrary Organs. Hence the Tongue and Lips performe Speech, and conforme Letters by locall Motion, as is most evident to Sense, and con∣firmed by Reason, for being a voluntary Action, it is therefore perform'd by Mo∣tion, as other voluntary Actions of the Tongue are. Indeed the Tongue as it is the sensory of Tast, doth not necessa∣rily require moving, for the alteration and dignotion of Sapors, is accompli∣shed without moving; but other offices of the Tongue as voluntary, are altoge∣ther performed by moving, most Emi∣nently among the rest that of Speech: So that Motion alone is able to give ac∣count of all the voluntary expressions of Speech.