Date: 1712

"Our Intellectual, like the Body's Eye, / Whilst in the Womb, no Object can descry; / Yet is dispos'd to entertain the Light, / And judge of Things when offer'd to the Sight."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1714

"But when a monad has organs that are adjusted in such a way that, through them, there is contrast and distinction among the impressions they receive, and consequently contrast and distinction in the perceptions that represent them [in the monads] (as, for example, when the rays of light are conc...

— Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716)

Date: 1728

"Ye Fairy Prospects then, / Ye Beds of Roses, and ye Bowers of Joy, / Farewell! Ye Gleamings of departing Peace, / Shine out your last! The yellow-tinging Plague / Internal Vision taints, and in a Night / Of livid Gloom Imagination wraps."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1730

"What dreadful havoc in the human breast / The passions make, when unconfin'd, and mad, / They burst, unguided by the mental eye, / The light of reason; which in various ways / Points them to good, or turns them back from ill."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1734

"And if it be said that the Understanding, which is but passive it self, like the bodily Eye, cannot be called the Leader of the rest of the Faculties; it must be granted, that (strictly speaking) it is rather the Light than the Guide: for if we consider it in the three Operations mention'd by th...

— Forbes of Pitsligo, Alexander Forbes, Lord (1678-1762)

Date: 1742

"Warnings point out our danger; gnomons, time: / As these are useless when the sun is set; / So those, but when more glorious Reason shines. / Reason should judge in all; in Reason's eye, / That sedentary shadow travels hard."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1742

"Through chinks, styled organs, dim Life peeps at light; / Death bursts the' involving cloud, and all is day; / All eye, all ear, the disembodied power."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1743

"Night is fair Virtue's immemorial friend; / The conscious Moon, through every distant age,/ Has held a lamp to Wisdom, and let fall / On Contemplation's eye her purging ray."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1743

"I'll range the plenteous intellectual field; / And gather every thought of sovereign power, / To chase the moral maladies of man; / Thoughts which may bear transplanting to the skies, / Though natives of this coarse penurious soil; / Nor wholly wither there, where seraphs sing, / Refined, exalte...

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"But beyond / This energy of truth, whose dictates bind / Assenting reason, the benignant sire, / To deck the honour'd paths of just and good, / Has added bright imagination's rays."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)