Date: 1741

"This is easily answered by a familiar instance: in every jack there is a meat-roasting quality, which neither resides in the fly, nor in the weight, nor in any particular wheel of the jack, but is the result of the whole composition."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744); Arbuthnot, John (bap. 1677, d. 1735)

Date: 1741

"This is easily answered by a familiar instance: in every jack there is a meat-roasting quality, which neither resides in the fly, nor in the weight, nor in any particular wheel of the jack, but is the result of the whole composition. So, in an animal, the self-consciousness is not a real quality...

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744); Arbuthnot, John (bap. 1677, d. 1735)

Date: 1747-8

"She set even my heart into a palpitation--Thump, thump, thump, like a precipitated pendulum in a clock-case"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1747-8

"So now, Belford, as thou hast said, I am a machine at last, and no free agent."

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1755

"Lord have mercy upon us! said the squire, did not I tell your worship to consider well what you were about? did not I assure you, they were no other than wind-mills? indeed no body could mistake them for any thing else, but one who has wind-mills in his own head!"

— Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de (1547-1616); Smollett, Tobias (1721-1771)

Date: 1760-7

"That had said glass been there set up, nothing more would have been wanting, in order to have taken a man's character, but to have taken a chair and gone softly, as you would to a dioptrical bee-hive, and look'd in,--view'd the soul stark naked;--observ'd all her motions,--her machinations;--tra...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Figuratively speaking, dear Toby, it may, for aught I know, said my father; but the spring I am speaking of, is that great and elastic power within us of counterbalancing evil, which like a secret spring in a well-ordered machine, though it can't prevent the shock--at least it imposes upon our s...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Though man is of all others the most curious vehicle, said my father, yet at the same time 'tis of so slight a frame and so totteringly put together, that the sudden jerks and hard jostlings it unavoidably meets with in this rugged journey, would overset and tear it to pieces a dozen times a day...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1771

"He observed, that her ladyship's brain was a perfect mill for projects; and that she and Tabby had certainly engaged in some secret treaty, the nature of which he could not comprehend"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1777

"If they say, that affection is a mere involuntary impulse, neither waiting the decisions of reason, or the dissuasive of prudence, do they not in reality degrade us to machines, which are blindly actuated by some uncontrollable power?"

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)