Date: 1742
"The human mind cannot continue long quite a tabula rasa; some images must of course be gaining upon its affections, and consequently, forming some propensities or habits."
preview | full record— Turnbull, George (1698-1748)
Date: 1742, 1777
"Let me consult my own passions and inclinations. In them must I read the dictates of nature; not in your frivolous discourses."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1744
"The first Man knew them by his Reason; but it was this same Reason that blotted them again from his Mind; for having attained to this Kind of natural Knowledge, he began to mingle therewith his own Notions and Ideas."
preview | full record— Campbell, John (1708-75)
Date: 1745
"We are told by Philosophers, of no small Note, that the Mind is, at first, a kind of Tabula rasa, or like a Piece of blank Paper, that it bears no original Inscriptions, when we come into the World,--that we owe all the Characters afterwards drawn upon it, to the Impressions made upon our Senses...
preview | full record— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)
Date: 1745
"As little would I agree with those Philosophers Constant mentioned, that the Mind resembles a Leaf of white Paper."
preview | full record— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)
Date: 1748, 1777
"It may, therefore, be a subject worthy of curiosity, to enquire what is the nature of that evidence, which assures us of any real existence and matter of fact, beyond the present testimony of our senses, or the records of our memory."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1748, 1754
The law "is within us, ever present with us, ever active and incumbent on the Mind, and engraven on the Heart in the fair and large Signatures of Conscience, Natural Affection, Compassion, Gratitude, and universal Benevolence."
preview | full record— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)
Date: 1748, 1754
"Nature has therefore endued us with a MIDDLE FACULTY, wonderfully adapted to our MIXED State, which holds partly of Sense and partly of Reason, being strongly allied to the former, and the common Receptacle in which all the Notices that come from that quarter are treasured up, and yet greatly su...
preview | full record— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)
Date: 1757
"Did I wait upon Bishop Gibson to acquaint him that I was a Free-thinker, that my mind was a tabula rasa!"
preview | full record— Bower, Archibald (1686-1766)
Date: 1757
"Since, therefore, the mind of man appears of so loose and unsteddy a contexture, that, even at present, when so many persons find an interest in continually employing on it the chissel and the hammer, yet are they not able to engrave theological tenets with any lasting impression; how much more ...
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)