Date: 1727

"Conscience, indeed, is a frightful Apparition itself, and I make no Question but it oftentimes haunts an oppressing Criminal into Restitution, and is a Ghost to him sleeping or waking: nor is it the least Testimony of an invisible World that there is such a Drummer as that in the Soul, that can ...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: Friday, April 21, 1727

"For though it is generally believed that few Statesmen are much afflicted with this terrible Inmate; yet, upon a careful Inspection of human Nature, I find it to be a vulgar Error; and am fully satisfied that, notwithstanding the outward placid Behaviour and smiling Aspect of t...

— Caleb d'Anvers [pseud. for Nicholas Amhurst, Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke, and William Pulteney, Earl of Bath]

Date: 1731

"Feeling is nothing but the Impulse, Motion, or Action of Bodies, gently or violently impressing the Extremities or Sides of the Nerves, of the Skin of other parts of the Body, which by their Structure and Mechanism, convey this Motion to the Sentient Principle in the Brain, or the Musician."

— Cheyne, George (1671-1743)

Date: 1731

"To which Purpose they have ingeniously contrived and set up an Active Understanding, like a Smith or Carpenter, with his Shop or Forge in the Brain, furnished with all necessary Tools and Instruments for such a Work."

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1731

"Where I would only demand of these Philosophers, Whether this their so expert Smith or Architect, the Active Understanding, when he goes about his Work, doth know what he is to do with these Phantasms before-hand, what he is to make of them, and unto what Shape to bring them? I...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1733

"May not the sentient Principle have its Seat in some Place in the Brain, where the Nerves terminate, like the Musician shut up in his Organ-Room? May not the infinite Windings, Convolutions, and Complications of the Beginning of the Nerves which constitute the Brain, serve to d...

— Cheyne, George (1671-1743)

Date: 1741

"This will gradually give the Mind a Faculty of surveying many objects at once; as a Room that is richly adorned and hung round with a great Variety of Pictures, strikes the Eye almost at once with all that Variety, especially if they have been well surveyed one by one at first: This makes it hab...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1745

"The body is but the house; the soul is the tenant that inhabits it; the body is the instrument; the soul the artist that directs it."

— Mason, John (1706-1763)

Date: 1748, 1777

"Chaced from the open country, these robbers [i.e., superstitions] fly into the forest, and lie in wait to break in upon every unguarded avenue of the mind, and overwhelm it with religious fears and prejudices."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1754

"Intellect, the artificer, works lamely without his proper instrument, sense; which is the case when he works on moral ideas."

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