Date: c. 43 AD

"Those things that men's untutored hearts revere, sunk in the bondage of their bodies--jewels, gold, silver, and polished tables, huge and round--all these are earthly dross, for which the untainted spirit, conscious of its own nature, can have no love, since it is itself light and uncumbered, wa...

— Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (c. 4 B.C. - A.D. 65)

Date: 1594

"Goodness is seen with the eye of the understanding. And the light of that eye, is reason."

— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)

Date: 1652

"But the publishing and manifestation of this Law which must give notice of all this, does flow from that heavenly beame which God has darted into the soul of man; from 'the Candle of the Lord', which God has lighted up for the discovery of his owne Lawes; from that intellectual eye which God has...

— Culverwell, Nathanael (bap. 1619, d. 1651)

Date: 1652

"There's scatter'd in the Soul of Man some seeds of light, which fill it with a vigorous pregnancy, with a multiplying fruitfulnesse, so that it brings forth a numerous and sparkling posterity of secondary Notions, which make for the crowning and encompassing of the Soul with happinesse."

— Culverwell, Nathanael (bap. 1619, d. 1651)

Date: 1652

"He did not antedate his own knowledge, nor remember the several postures of his soul, and the famous exploits of his minde before he was born; but plainly profest that his understanding came naked into the world. He shews you an [...], an abrasa tabula, a virgin-soul espousing it self to the bod...

— Culverwell, Nathanael (bap. 1619, d. 1651)

Date: 1698

"From all which Considerations, (any One of which might suffice,) I may Safely and Evidently conclude, that, in point of Evidence of its Truth, and Stability of its Grounds, nothing can be any way comparable to the Light which strikes the Eye of our Understanding, by its steady Rays emitted from ...

— Sergeant, John (1622-1707)

Date: 1700

"For (says he) Man can no more be a Light to his Mind than he is to his Body: And thence infers, that as the Eye has no Light in it self, so neither the Understanding."

— Leslie, Charles (1650-1722)

Date: 1700

" I will not take advantage of the Philosophy of this; for, I suppose his meaning to be, that it is Natural to the Understanding to Receive a Light that is infused into it, as for the Eye to see by an Extraneous light; that is, it is an Organ fitted to Receive Light, tho' it has none in it self; ...

— Leslie, Charles (1650-1722)

Date: 1714

"But when a monad has organs that are adjusted in such a way that, through them, there is contrast and distinction among the impressions they receive, and consequently contrast and distinction in the perceptions that represent them [in the monads] (as, for example, when the rays of light are conc...

— Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716)

Date: 1734

"And if it be said that the Understanding, which is but passive it self, like the bodily Eye, cannot be called the Leader of the rest of the Faculties; it must be granted, that (strictly speaking) it is rather the Light than the Guide: for if we consider it in the three Operations mention'd by th...

— Forbes of Pitsligo, Alexander Forbes, Lord (1678-1762)