Date: 1674

"Secondly it seem'd to me no less unconceivable, whence that dismal ψυχομαχια or intestin war which every Man too frequently feels within himself, and whereof even St. Paul himself so sadly complained, when (in Epist. ad Roman. cap. 3.) he cries out, video aliam legem in membris meis repugnantem ...

— Charleton, Walter (1620-1707)

Date: 1674

"What then can remain to cause this dire war daily observed within us, betwixt the allurements of our Sense, on one side, and the grave dictates of our Mind, on the other; but two distinct Agents, the Rational Soul and the Sensitive, coexistent within us, and hotly contending about the conduct of...

— Charleton, Walter (1620-1707)

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...

— Charleton, Walter (1620-1707)

Date: 1674

"This Glandule which he supposeth to be so easily flexible and yielding to contrary impulses, is not loosely suspended, but fixed: so that whoever hath once beheld the solid basis, strong consistence, and firm connexion thereof, will hardly ever be brought to allow it capable of any impulse to ei...

— Charleton, Walter (1620-1707)

Date: 1674

"Though we should grant this Gland to be both the Throne of the Soul, and most easily flexible every way: yet hath Des Cartes left it still unconceivable, how an Immaterial Agent, not infinite, comes to move by impuls a solid body, without the mediation of a third thing that is less disparil or d...

— Charleton, Walter (1620-1707)

Date: 1674

"And as for the Bipartition of this Sensitive Soul into two principle members as it were, or active sourses; vix. the Fiery part, upon which Life depends; and the Lucid, from whence all the faculties Animal are, like so many distinct rayes of light, derived."

— Charleton, Walter (1620-1707)

Date: 1674

"In Man indeed, it seems not difficult to conceive, that the Rational Soul, as president of all th'inferiour faculties, and constantly speculating the impressions, or images represented to her by the Sensitive, as by a mirrour; doth first form to herself conceptions and notions correspondent to t...

— Charleton, Walter (1620-1707)

Date: 1678

"A Weak mind complains before it is overtaken with evil, and as Birds are affrighted with the noise of the Sling, so the infirm soul anticipates its troubles by its own fearful apprehensions, and falls under them before they are yet arrived."

— Wanley, Nathaniel (1634-1680)

Date: 1678, 2nd edition in 1743

"But as for that prodigious paradox of Atheists, that cogitation itself is nothing but local motion or mechanism, we could not have thought it possible, that ever any many should have given entertainment to such a conceit, but that this was rather a meer slander raised upon Atheists."

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1678, 2nd edition in 1743

"That Vital Sympathy, by which our Soul is united and tied fast, as it were with a Knot, to the Body, is a thing that we have no direct Consciousness of, but only in its Effects."

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)