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Date: 1641

"As Lots wife was turned into a Pillar of Salt, that her inconstancie might be fixt, and yet be melting still: So, thou, my Soule, if I had my wish, shouldst be turned into a Pillar of Thoughts; that thy volubility might be restrain'd, and yet be thinking still."

— Baker, Richard, Sir (c. 1568-1645)

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Date: 1649

"But since humane flesh (that king of Beasts) began to delight himself in the objects of the Creation, more then in the Spirit Reason and Righteousness, who manifests himself to be the indweller in the Five Sences, of Hearing, Seeing, Tasting, Smelling, Feeling; then he fell into blindness of min...

— William Everard, John Palmer, John South, John Courton. William Taylor, Christopher Clifford, John Barker, Ferrard Winstanley, Richard Goodgroome, Thomas Starre, William Hoggrill, Robert Sawyer, Thomas Eder, Henry Bickerstaffe, John Taylor, &c,

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Date: 1651, 1668

"And therefore of absurd and false affirmations, in case they be universal, there can be no understanding, though many think they understand them, when they do but repeat the words softly, or con them in their mind."

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

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Date: 1651, 1668

"This decaying sense, when we would express the thing itself (I mean fancy itself), we call imagination, as I said before; but when we would express the decay, and signify that the sense is fading, old, and past, it is called memory."

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

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Date: 1651, 1668

"When a body is once in motion, it moveth (unless something else hinders it) eternally; and whatsoever hindreth it, cannot in an instant, but in time and by degrees, quite extinguish it"

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

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Date: 1651, 1668

"Again, from thence, his thoughts run over the same places and times, to find what action, or other occasion might make him lose it."

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

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Date: 1651

"By the apprehensive power we perceive the species of sensible things present, or absent, and retain them as wax doth the print of a seal."

— Burton, Robert (1577-1640)

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Date: 1651

"Memory lays up all the species which the senses have brought in, and records them as a good register, that they may be forthcoming when they are called for by phantasy and reason"

— Burton, Robert (1577-1640)

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Date: 1651

"This litigation of senses proceeds from an inhibition of spirits, the way being stopped by which they should come; this stopping is caused of vapours arising out of the stomach, filling the nerves, by which the spirits should be conveyed"

— Burton, Robert (1577-1640)

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Date: 1651

"Many erroneous opinions are about the essence and original of [the rational soul]; whether it be fire, as Zeno held; harmony, as Aristoxenus; number, as Xenocrates; whether it be organical, or inorganical; seated in the brain, heart or blood; mortal or immortal; how it comes into the body."

— Burton, Robert (1577-1640)

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