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Date: 1703-4

"All therefore that [Jesus] cou'd take from his Mother, must be the Weaknesses, not the Faults of Humanity, not proceeding from her like a rasa tabula, with no Impressions at all, but indifferent to good and evil"

— Anonymous

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Date: 1726

"As to the understanding, [Epicurus] believ'd, That at first it had no ideas; that it was a kind of tabula rasa; and that, when the organs of the body are form'd, its knowledge of things increases gradually by the mediation of the senses."

— Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe (1651-1715); Anonymous

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Date: 1730

"Now, if such a complex being were in nature, how would that spiritual Soul act in that Body, that in its first Union with it (excepting some universal Principles) is a rasa Tabula, as a white Paper, without the Notices of Things written in it?"

— Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe (1651-1715); Anonymous

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Date: 1731

"The Mind is a meer tabula rasa, originally without any Impression, Stamp or Character whatsoever, (unless we'll suppose it the same with Brutes) but capable of any, and most apt to receive the first that offers, till external Objects furnish it with distinct Ideas, and from thence ...

— Anonymous

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Date: 1741

"If the Mind be as it were a rasa tabula in respect of the one, the same Reasons make it extremely probable that she must be so in respect of the other likewise"

— Anonymous

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Date: 1742

"But if the Soul was like a Tabula Rasa, or a fair Sheet of Paper, (as Mr L -- says) it would be no more capable of having Knowledge of any kind excited in it, than a Sheet of Paper can have Knowledge excited in it."

— Anonymous

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Date: 1744

"And, as the Mind cannot long continue a Tabula rasa, a meer Blank, but some Images will be impress'd upon it, we ought therefore to form good Habits and Propensities to Virtue."

— Anonymous

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Date: 1748

"Our LORD uses both Methods at once, in order to fit his Disciples for their Duty, to open their Eyes, to extend their Views, to extirpate Prejudices, to make every Man's Mind a rasa Tabula, or as his own Phrase is, to make plain the Ways of the LORD."

— Anonymous; [Lyttleton]

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Date: 1748

The "Author of our Being, when he breathers into us the Breath of Life, and speaks us into Existence, leaves our Minds a pure Tabula rasa capable of any Impression, and free from all innate Prepossessions in favour of Vice or vicious Habits, but more susceptible from its own nature of virt...

— Anonymous

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Date: 1748

"And he labours hard to prove that these Ideas are not innate, but would have our Souls like a Blank Paper, a Rasa Tabula, ready to receive Ideas, but void of all; And affirms that these Ideas are the Foundation of all our Knowledge; and that they are conveyed to the Mind by external Objects."

— Anonymous [A Gentleman Late of the Temple, George Osborn]

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