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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)

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Date: 1653

There are not "Ideas flaring and shining to the Animadversive faculty like so many Torches or Starres in the Firmament to our outward sight [...] and Red Letters or Astronomical Characters in an Almanack."

— More, Henry (1614-1687)

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Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"In all these cases, Ideas in the Mind, quickly fade, and often vanish quite out of the Understanding, leaving no more footsteps or remaining Characters of themselves, than Shadows do flying over fields of Corn; and the Mind is as void of them, as if they never had been there."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

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Date: w. c. 1709, 1711

"As on the land while here the Ocean gains, / In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains; / Thus in the soul while memory prevails, / The solid pow'r of understanding fails; / Where beams of warm imagination play, / The memory's soft figures melt away."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

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Date: 1723, 1725

"AS Tapers languish at th' Approach of Day," and as the "Book of Fame" may be "Eraz'd and blotted," "So fully o'er the Soul may a lover's Influence reign, "That not one Rebel-Thought [its] Sway disdains"

— Haywood [née Fowler], Eliza (1693?-1756)

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Date: 1731

"Now I observe that it is so far from being true, that all our Objective Cogitations or Ideas are Corporeal Effluxes or Radiations from Corporeal Things without, or impressed upon the Soul from them in a gross Corporeal Manner, as a Signature or Stamp is imprinted by a Seal upon a piece of Wax or...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

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The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.