Date: 1700

"He makes our Nature and Minds wholly Dark of themselves, only succeptible of Super-natural light, when sent into our Understanding."

— Leslie, Charles (1650-1722)

Date: 1700

" I will not take advantage of the Philosophy of this; for, I suppose his meaning to be, that it is Natural to the Understanding to Receive a Light that is infused into it, as for the Eye to see by an Extraneous light; that is, it is an Organ fitted to Receive Light, tho' it has none in it self; ...

— Leslie, Charles (1650-1722)

Date: 1700

"And so, tho they have Reason, yet are they not Reasonable, because that Reason is none of their own, only as Gifted, that is, Accidental, but not Natural to them; and so they can no more be called Rational, than a Bag can be called Rich, that has Money in it."

— Leslie, Charles (1650-1722)

Date: 1754

"I shall not, therefore, say any thing further about the nature of mind in general, that secret spring of thought, unknown and unknowable, but shall content myself to observe, in Mr. Locke's method and with his assistance, something about the phænomena of the human mind, by which we may judge sur...

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

Date: 1754

"I say, we may judge surely of them; because our ideas are the foundations, or the materials, call them which you please, of all our knowledge; because without entering into an enquiry concerning the origin of them, we may know so certainly as to exclude all doubt, what ideas we have; and because...

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

Date: 1754

"The human soul is so far from being furnished with forms and ideas to perceive all things by, or from being impregnated, I would rather say than printed over, with the seeds of universal knowledge, that we have no ideas till we receive passively the ideas of sensible qualities from without."

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

Date: 1754

"Sensation would be of little use to form the understanding, if we had no other faculty than mere passive perception; but without sensation these other faculties would have nothing to operate upon, reflection would have by consequence nothing to reflect upon, and it is by reflection that we multi...

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

Date: 1754

"They are, if I may say so, of the mind's own growth, the elements of knowledge, more immediate, less relative, and less dependent than sensitive knowledge, as any man will be apt to think, who compares his ideas of remembering, recollecting, bare thought, and intenseness of thought, with those o...

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

Date: 1754

"If we consider these ideas like foundations, they are extremely narrow, and shallow, neither reaching to many things, nor laid deep in the nature of any."

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

Date: 1754

"If we consider them like materials, for so they may be considered likewise, employed to raise the fabric of our intellectual system, they will appear like mud, and straw, and lath, materials fit to erect some frail, and homely cottage, but not of substance, nor value sufficient for the construct...

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