> as lemmas

?c1400 (c1380) G. Chaucer tr. Boethius De Consol. Philos. (BL Add. 10340) (1868) v. pr. iv. l. 4804 It [sc. intelligence] byholdeþ alle þinges so as I shal seye. by a strok of þouȝt formely wiþ oute discours or collacioun [L. sed illo uno ictu mentis formaliter, ut ita dicam, cuncta prospiciens].

1483 ( tr. G. Deguileville Pilgrimage of Soul (Caxton) iv. xxviii. f. lxxiiij^v The sowle..seketh by discors of reson the skyles & the causes of the wonderful beaute of these forsaid creatures.

1553 R. Eden in tr. S. Münster Treat. Newe India Pref. sig. Aij^v As could hardely be comprehended by the discourse of reason.

1604 W. Shakespeare Hamlet i. ii. 150 A beast that wants discourse of reason . View more context for this quotation

a1618 W. Raleigh Remains (1644) 131 The Dog..we see is plentifully furnished with inward discourse.

1672 Bp. J. Wilkins Of Princ. Nat. Relig. 56 The discerning of that connexion or dependance which there is betwixt several propositions..which is called ratiocination, or discourse.

1732 S. Browne Def. Relig. Nature ii. 85 He not only labours, by his discourse of reason, to destroy the authority of revelation, but to prove it wholly useless.

1788 J. Wesley Wks. (1872) VI. 353 Discourse, strictly speaking, is the motion or progress of the mind from one judgment to another.

1818 S. T. Coleridge Friend (new ed.) I. 268 Reason cannot exist without Understanding; nor does it or can it manifest itself but in and through the understanding, which in our elder writers is often called discourse, or the discursive faculty.

a1856 W. Hamilton Lect. Metaphysics (1859) I. App. 415 No one with the ordinary discourse of reason could commit an error in regard to them.

1890 Sunday School Times (Philadelphia) 1 Nov. 691/3 Why are we to renounce the faculty of discourse, to square our minds to those of Dr. Riehm, to let him do the thinking for us?

1905 G. Santayana Life of Reason IV. v. 74 We mean by ‘mind’..not a bundle of psychoses nor an angelic substance, but quick intelligence, the faculty of discourse.

1923 Mind 32 185 No thinking, no discourse of reason, is needed to give him this objective datum; his own innate instinctive tendencies are sufficient.

2005 Stage (Nexis) 20 Oct. 9 And yet the man who had the courage to purchase a Canaletto, whose collection is regarded as one of the finest in private hands, foists this trash on his public. It wants discourse of reason.