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Date: 1670

"Thus, like a captive in an isle confined, / Man walks at large, a prisoner of the mind."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

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Date: 1685

"For, as we see in Princes Pallaces, / How all the avenues, and passages / Are strictly guarded, to oppose the rude / Tumultuous entries of the Multitude: / Whilst civil persons, who have business, / Pass through the Guards, and dayly make address / To th'Princes ear: so all the Guards o'th' brai...

— Clark, William (fl. 1663-1685)

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Date: Licens'd Decemb. 22. 1691

"She had proceeded thus far in a maze of Thought, when she started to find her self so lost to her Reason, and would have trod back again that path of deluding Fancy."

— Congreve, William (1670-1729)

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Date: 1704

"The practitioners of this famous art proceed, in general, upon the following fundamental, that the corruption of the senses is the generation of the spirit; because the senses in men are so many avenues to the fort of reason, which, in this operation, is wholly blocked up."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

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Date: 1709, 1810

"Yet the silly wand'ring mind, / Loth to be too much confin'd, / Roves and takes her daily tours, / Coasting round the narrow shores, / Narrow shores of flesh and sense, / Picking shells and pebbles thence: / Or she sits at fancy's door, / Calling shapes and shadows to her, / Foreign visits still...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

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Date: 1711

"The scorcht and pathless Desarts of the Brain, / Want proper Caves and Cells to entertain / A Crowd of airy Forms and long Ideal Train."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

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Date: 1711

"And reflecting on what is transacted within us, it seems to me a very diverting Scene to think when we strive to recollect something that does not then occur; how nimbly those volatil Messengers of ours will beat through all the Paths, and hunt every Enclosure of the Organ set aside for thinking...

— Mandeville, Bernard (bap. 1670, d. 1733)

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