Date: 1704

"As thro' the Artist's intervening Glass, / Our Eye observes the distant Planets pass; / A little we discover; but allow, / That more remains unseen, than Art can show: / So whilst our Mind it's Knowledge wou'd improve; / (It's feeble Eye intent on Things above) / High as We may, We lift our Rea...

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1731

"Whereas Sense it self is but the Passive Perception of some Individual Material Forms, but to Know or Understand is Actively to Comprehend a thing by some Abstract, Free and Universal Reasonings, from whence the Mind as it were looking down (as Boetius expresseth it) upon the Individuals below i...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1731

"The Eye which is placed in a Level with the Sea, and touches the Surface of it, cannot take any large Prospect upon the Sea, much less see the whole Amplitude of it. But an Eye Elevated to a higher Station, and from thence looking down, may comprehensively view the whole Sea at once, or at least...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1731

"Wherefore that we may the better understand how far the Passion of Sense reaches, and where the Activity of the Mind begins, we will compare these three Things together: First, a Mirror, Looking-glass or Crystal Globe; Secondly, a Living Eye, that is, a Seeing or Perceptive Mirror or Looking-gla...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1731

"For what is Pulchritude in Visible Objects, or Harmony in Sounds, but the Proportion, Symmetry and Commensuration of Figures, and Sounds to one another, whereby Infinity is Measured and Determined, and Multiplicity and Variety vanquished and triumphed over by Unity, and by that means they become...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1751, 1777

"And, indeed, without such a correction of appearances, both in internal and external sentiment, men could never think or talk steadily on any subject; while their fluctuating situations produce a continual variation on objects, and throw them into such different and contrary lights and positions."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1754

"But in this we are much kinder to our sense than to our intellect; for in order to assist the former we use glasses and spectacles of all kinds adapted to our deficiency of sight, whereas in the latter we are so far from accepting the assistance of mental glasses or spectacles, that we often str...

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)

Date: 1759

"Bring him into society, and he is immediately provided with the mirror which he wanted before. It is placed in the countenance and behaviour of those he lives with, which always mark when they enter into, and when they disapprove of his sentiments; and it is here that he first views the propriet...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1760-7

"That had said glass been there set up, nothing more would have been wanting, in order to have taken a man's character, but to have taken a chair and gone softly, as you would to a dioptrical bee-hive, and look'd in,--view'd the soul stark naked;--observ'd all her motions,--her machinations;--tra...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"[A]n illustration is no argument,--nor do I maintain the wiping of a looking-glass clean, to be a syllogism;--but you all, may it please your worships, see the better for it,--so that the main good these things do, is only to clarify the understanding, previous to the application of the argument...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)