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Date: 1606

An "evill and hinderance to wisdome ... is the confusion and captivitie of his passions, and turbulent affections, whereof he must disfurnish and free himselfe, to the end he may be emptie and neate, like a white paper, and be made a subject more fit to receive tincture and impressions of wisdome...

— Charron, Pierre (1541-1603); Lennard, Sampson (d. 1633)

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Date: 1615

"[W]e are also of [Adam's] off-spring; not that I conceive (as some blasphemously have done) that he was made out of the very essence of God, but because the image of the divine nature, is most lively imprinted in his soul and in his body, and in the substance & qualities of them both. For the So...

— Crooke, Helkiah (1576-1648)

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Date: 1664

"But I shall content myself with telling you more about how the traces are imprinted on the internal part of the brain which is the seat of the memory."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

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Date: 1684

"Since Harmony, like Fire to VVax, does fit / The softned Heart Impressions to admit."

— Behn, Aphra (1640?-1689)

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Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"First, in so far as our external senses are all parts of the body, sense-perception, strictly speaking, is merely passive, even though our application of the senses to objects involves action, viz. local motion; sense-perception occurs in the same way in which wax takes on an impression from a s...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

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Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"In all these functions the cognitive power is sometimes passive, sometimes active; sometimes resembling the seal, sometimes the wax."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

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Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"It should not be thought that I have a mere analogy in mind here: we must think of the external shape of the sentient body as being really changed by the object in exactly the same way as the shape of the surface of the wax is altered by the seal."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

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Date: 1686

"But the false Image she will ne're erace, / Though far unworthy still to hold its place: / So hard it is, even Wiser grown, to take / Th' Impression out, which Fancy once did make."

— Killigrew, Anne (1660-1685)

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Date: 1689, 1716

Honor is "The richest Treasure of a generous Breast, / 'That gives the Stamp and Standard to the rest."

— Montagu, Charles, 1st Earl of Halifax (1661-1715)

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Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"But there is this farther Argument in it against their being innate: That these Characters, if they were native and original Impressions, should appear fairest and clearest in those Persons, in whom yet we find no Footsteps of them."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

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