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: 1731

"Now Sense, that is a Living Eye or Mirror, as soon as ever it is Converted toward this Object, will here Passively perceive an Appearance of an Individual Thing, as existing without it, White and Triangular, without any Distinction Concretely and Confusedly together; and it will perceive no more...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1736

"Upon the whole, then, our organs of sense and our limbs are certainly instruments which the living persons, ourselves, make use of to perceive and move with: there is not any probability that they are any more; nor consequently, that we have any other kind of relation to them, that what we may h...

— Butler, Joseph (1692-1752)

Date: 1737, 1743

"The best way to prove the clearness of our mind, is by shewing its Faults; as when a Stream discovers the Dirt at the bottom, it convinceth us of the transparency and purity of the Water."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1751

"There are few among Mankind, who have not been often struck with Admiration at the Sight of that Variety of Colours and Magnificence of Form, which appear in an Evening Rainbow. The uninstructed in Philosophy consider that splendid Object, not as dependent on any other, but as being possessed of...

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: Tuesday, October 2, 1753

"It has been discovered by Sir Isaac Newton, that the distinct and primogenial colours are only seven; but every eye can witness, that from various mixtures, in various proportions, infinite diversifications of tints may be produced. In like manner, the passions of the mind, which put the world i...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1754

"But memory will never present ideas to the human mind, as it does perhaps to superior intelligences, like objects in a mirror, where they may be viewed at every instant, all at once, without effort or toil, in their original freshness, and with their original precision, such as they were when th...

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1759

"A Genius implies the rays of the mind concenter'd, and determined to some particular point; when they are scatter'd widely, they act feebly, and strike not with sufficient force, to fire, or dissolve, the heart."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1768

"How the history of Utopia holds up in the mirror of fancy, the picture of a well policied state, its arts, its laws, and government?"

— Wynne, Edward (1734-1784)