Date: 1615
"Secondly, that the functions and offices of the outward senses, which are all placed as it were a guard in pension, in the palace of the head, and in the view and presence Chamber of Reason, which is their sovereign, might in a more excellent manner be exercised and put in practice."
preview | full record— Crooke, Helkiah (1576-1648)
Date: 1641
"You may say that you occupy the citadel in your brain and there receive whatever messages are transmitted by the animal spirits which move through the nerves, and sense-perception thus occurs there, where you dwell, despite the fact that it is said to occur throughout the body."
preview | full record— Gassendi, Pierre (1592-1655)
Date: 1654
"The certainty that that time will come, together with the uncertainty, how, where, and when, should make us so to number our days to apply our hearts to wisdom, that when we are put out of these houses of clay we may be sure of an everlasting habitation that fades not away."
preview | full record— Bradstreet, Anne (1612-1672)
Date: 1659
"As first the Frame of the Body, of which I think most reasonable to conclude the Soule her self to be the more particular Architect (for I will not wholly reject Plotinus his opinion;) and that the Plastick power resides in her, as also in the Soules of Brute animals, as very learned and worthy ...
preview | full record— More, Henry (1614-1687)
Date: 1660, 1676
"Because he that endeavours to keep a good Conscience and hath an honest mind, besides that he will inquire after his duty sufficiently, he will be able to tell very much of it himself: for God will assist him, and cause that his own mind shall tell him more than seven Watchmen that sit in a Tow...
preview | full record— Taylor, Jeremy (bap. 1613, 1667)
Date: w. 1663, 1954 publication
"Without the help and assistance of the senses [the mind] can achieve nothing more than a labourer working in darkness behind shuttered windows"
preview | full record— Locke, John (1632-1704)
Date: 1664
"What does the Soul, but (like an excellent Chymist) in this internal Laboratory of Man, by a fermentation of our nourishment in the stomach and guts, a filtration thereof through the Lacteae, a digestion in the Heart, a Circulation and Rectification in the Veins and Arteries: what does she, I sa...
preview | full record— Power, Henry (1623-1668)
Date: 1674
"To this Objection therefore I answer (1.) that had this excellent Man, Monsieur des Cartes been but half as conversant in Anatomy, as he seems to have been in Geometry, doubtles he would never have lodged so noble a guest as the Rational Soul, in so incommodious a closet of the brain, as the Gla...
preview | full record— Charleton, Walter (1620-1707)
Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706
Ideas may be "rouzed and tumbled out of their dark Cells, into open Day-light"
preview | full record— Locke, John (1632-1704)
Date: 1691
"First, for Use; So we see the Senses of such eminent Use for our well-being, situate in the Head, as Sentinels in a Watch-Tower, to receive and conveigh to the Soul the impressions of external Objects"
preview | full record— Ray [formerly Wray], John (1627–1705)