Date: 1734

"Beside the advantage of a good Memory, as it serves for making a figure in Conversation, it is still valuable upon better Reasons; since it may be made a Storehouse of the most profitable and agreeable things."

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

Date: 1734

"But what shall we think of this odd Treasury, which retains things during a certain time, and then loses them, even before the Infirmities of Age come on? We say a thing has dropt out of our head: (where does it drop?) and it drops in again when we least expect it. What Corners do those Images l...

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

Date: 1734

"The question is, how this Familiarity arises? and how the Cabinet comes to be sensible of any thing that's put into it? A Scritore knows nothing of the Papers which the careful Banker locks up in it? Or a Glass, tho' it may be said to receive the Image of a Beau, and he really sees somewhat of h...

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

Date: 1734

"But what Texture of the Brain is sufficient to perform all the various Operations they assign to it, Sensation, Reflection, Wishing, Loving, Hating? Of what figure are the Cells for Poetry, and those for Mathematicks? And what Lodgings of the Brain are Honesty and Knavery to be found in?"

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

Date: January 1739

"I shall therefore observe, that as the mind is endowed with a power of exciting any idea it pleases; whenever it despatches the spirits into that region of the brain, in which the idea is placed; these spirits always excite the idea, when they run precisely into the proper traces, and rummage th...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

Personal identity may be like a church, "which was formerly of brick, fell to ruin, and that the parish rebuilt the same church of free-stone, and according to modern architecture."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1744

"The Preservation of Life, the defending the human Body from Decay, and of rendering it a fit Tenement for the Soul to inhabit, in that Season in which she is most capable of exerting her noblest Faculties, are grave and ferious Subjects; with which no trivial Matters ought to mingle."

— Campbell, John (1708-75)

Date: 1748, 1754

"Into this common Storehouse are likewise carried all those Moral Images or Forms which are derived from our Moral Faculties of Perception, and there they often undergo new Changes and Appearances, by being mixed and wrought up with the Images and Forms of Sensible or Natural Thing."

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1751

"The necessity therefore of the influence of the brain and nerves towards producing muscular motion, is not to be disproved by a few rare instances of ossified, petrified, or otherwise morbid brains found in animals, which seemed tolerably healthy, and had the motion of all their muscles; since i...

— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)