Date: 1712
"See, how resistless Orators perswade, / Draw out their Forces, and the Heart invade: / Touch ev'ry Spring and Movement of the Soul, / This Appetite excite, and That controul."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1712
"What Philosophic Builder will essay / By Rules Mechanic to unfold the way / How a Machine must be dispos'd to think, / Ideas how to frame, and how to link?"
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1712
Lucretius and Epicurus are asked, "How to the Mind a Thought reflected goes, / And how the conscious Engine knows it Knows."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1712
"Tell us, Lucretius, Epicurus, tell, / And you in Wit unrival'd shall excel, / How thro' the outward Sense the Object flies, / How in the Soul her Images arise. / What Thinking, what Perception is, explain; / What all the airy Creatures of the Brain; / How to the Mind a Thought reflected goes, / ...
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1714
"Have you examin'd / Into your inmost Heart, and try'd at leisure / The several secret Springs that move the Passions? / Has Mercy fix'd her Empire there so sure, / That Wrath and Vengeance never may return?"
preview | full record— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)
Date: 1723
"Can'st say what diff'rent Turns the Spirits take, / When they of diff'rent Kinds Impressions make; / What vital Springs those Spirits in their Flight / Strike to cause Torment, what to give Delight."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: September 10, 1726
"First then I lay down, as an undeniable Truth, that we have in common with other Animals a certain Machine of a curious and exquisite Workmanship, the principal Springs whereof are Imagination and Memory."
preview | full record— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)
Date: September 10, 1726
"To explain this, we must consider that the first Image which an outward Object imprints on our Brain is very slight; it resembles a thin Vapour which dwindles into nothing, without leaving the least track after it. But if the same Object successively offers itself several times, the Image it occ...
preview | full record— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)
Date: September 17, 1726
"I have now, Sir, laid open to you the Faculties of the Mind, and shewn that those of most Men consist but in a mechanical Operation, as well as those of other Animals."
preview | full record— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)
Date: 1759
"The wheels of the watch are all admirably adjusted to the end for which it was made, the pointing of the hour. All their various motions conspire in the nicest manner to produce this effect. If they were endowed with a desire and intention to produce it, they could not do it better. Yet we never...
preview | full record— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)