Date: 1745

"'I am too noble, and of too high a birth,' saith that excellent moralist, 'to be a slave to my body; which I look upon only as a chain thrown upon the liberty of my soul.'"

— Mason, John (1706-1763)

Date: 1745

"They are plainly and explicitly published; easily understood; and in fair and legible characters writ in every man's heart; and the wisdom, reason, and necessity of them are readily discerned."

— Mason, John (1706-1763)

Date: 1745

"But what is most dishonourable of all is, for a man at once to discover a great genius and an ungoverned mind. Because that strength of reason and understanding he is master of gives him a great advantage for the government of his passions."

— Mason, John (1706-1763)

Date: 1745

"And therefore his suffering himself notwithstanding to be governed by them, shows that he hath too much neglected or misapplied his natural talent, and willingly submitted to the tyranny of those lusts and passions, over which nature had furnished him with abilities to have secured an easy conqu...

— Mason, John (1706-1763)

Date: 1745

"As in the humours of the body, so in the vices of the mind, there is one predominant which has an ascendant over us, and leads and governs us."

— Mason, John (1706-1763)

Date: 1746

"For as those Things which affect our Senses, are always esteem'd the surest and most infallible Test of every Doctrine; so a more than common Regard to those is necessary in our Attempts for the Advancement of Medicine; which as it is only conversible with sensible Bodies, ought not to admit any...

— Willan, Robert (fl. 1746-1757)

Date: 1747

"With such goodness is our nature constituted, so gentle is the reign of virtue, that it restrains not its subjects from that enjoyment of bodily pleasures, which upon a right estimate will be found the sweetest: altho’ this she demands, that we should still preserve so lively a sense of the supe...

— Hutcheson, Francis (1694-1746)

Date: 1747

"But on the other hand under the empire of sensuality there's no admittance for the virtues; all the nobler joys from a conscious goodness, a sense of virtue, and deserving well of others, must be banished; and generally along with them even the rational manly pleasures of the ingenious arts."

— Hutcheson, Francis (1694-1746)

Date: 1748, 1777

"They know, that a human body is a mighty complicated machine: That many secret powers lurk in it, which are altogether beyond our comprehension: That to us it must often appear very uncertain in its operations: And that therefore the irregular events, which outwardly discover themselves, can be ...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748

"Consequently, whenever a Man attempts to subdue his Passions, and to put them under the regular Government of their natural sovereign Reason, the irrational Part must submit to the rational, the Brute must yield to the Man, and the Soul in the Event gain the Superiority over every Passion or App...

— Anonymous