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Date: 1760

"A man this emptied and vacuated of self-conceit, these lines of natural pride, being blotted out, the soul is as a Tabula rasa, an unwritten table, to receive any impression of the law of God, that he pleases to put on it; and then his words are all plain to him that understandeth, and right to ...

— Binning, Hugh (1627-1653)

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Date: 1760-7

"For the next two whole stages, no subject would go down, but the heavy blow he had sustain'd from the loss of a son, whom it seems he had fully reckon'd upon in his mind, and register'd down in his pocket-book, as a second staff for his old age, in case Bobby should fail him."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

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Date: 1761

"[M]any, therefore, may violate that rule of right, which the hand of the Almighty has written upon the living tablets of the heart"

— Hawkesworth, John (bap. 1720, d. 1773)

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Date: 1761

"Yea, the Soul herself is radically deprav'd and essentially invenom'd by her Disunion from God, so that she is the Seat of Defilement in the human Composition; even the Soul of an Infant since the lapse of the Protoplasts is no more born as a Tabula rasa, nor is that Saying of an Orator "Homines...

— Hammond, William (1719-1783)

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Date: 1761

"The great Mr. Locke has resembled the infant mind to a rasa tabula, as he expresses it a clean piece of paper, with no inscriptions, tho' susceptible of them."

— Stiles, Ezra (1727-1795)

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Date: 1761

"But now proceed; / Give me more names; these many I have wrote / Deep in the vengeful tablets of my heart."

— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)

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Date: 1761

"Injurious woman, / Wou'd that men's thoughts were graven on their hearts!"

— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)

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Date: 1761, 1790

If the mind is corporeal it must be composed of infinite parts: "Which then can claim dominion o'er the rest, / Or stamp the ruling passion in the breast"

— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787); Browne, Isaac Hawkins (1706-1760)

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Date: 1761, 1790

"This then's the first great law by Nature giv'n, / Stamp'd on our souls, and ratify'd by Heav'n"

— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787); Browne, Isaac Hawkins (1706-1760)

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Date: 1761

The mind of the hearer might very well be a tabula rasa, free from every prejudice, and like soft wax, susceptible of every impression; and with all this, not yield to truth itself, proposed in the manner it is every day proposed, under the appearance of falsehood."

— Batteaux, Charles (1713-1780)

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