 John’s view is that man’s rational faculty demands a level of sociability unparalleled in nature. In Ciceronian fashion, the Metalogicon argues that reason’s discovery of the naturalness of association is not sufficient, because such individual realization can never generate the community that it knows to be natural to and beneficial for human existence. Speech is the mechanism by which mute wisdom translates its insights into public proclamations and persuades men to follow their natural inclination by surrendering their private interests in favor of the common good (ML: 126). Should humans retain their rational abilities yet be deprived of speech, “they will become brute beasts, and … cities will seem like farmyards rather than gatherings of human beings united in the bonds of society” (ML: 126). Enlightened eloquence, however,