Date: c. 501 B.C.

"A dry gleam of light is the wisest and best soul."

— Heraklitus (fl. 504-1 BCE)

Date: 1675, 1746

"The Ground needs no other midwifery in bringing forth Weeds, than only the neglect of the Husbandman's Hand to pluck them up; the Air needs no other Cause of Darkness, than the Absence of Sun; nor water of Coldness, than its Distance from the Fire, because these are the genuine Products of ...

— Westminster Assembly (1643-1652)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"In all these cases, Ideas in the Mind, quickly fade, and often vanish quite out of the Understanding, leaving no more footsteps or remaining Characters of themselves, than Shadows do flying over fields of Corn; and the Mind is as void of them, as if they never had been there."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1714

"But when a monad has organs that are adjusted in such a way that, through them, there is contrast and distinction among the impressions they receive, and consequently contrast and distinction in the perceptions that represent them [in the monads] (as, for example, when the rays of light are conc...

— Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716)

Date: 1724

"As a Stone in a Wall, fastened with Mortar, compressed by surrounding Stones, and involved in a Million of other Attractions, cannot fall to the Earth, nor sensibly exert its natural Gravity, no, not so much as to discover there is such a Principle in it; just so, the intelligent Soul, in this h...

— Cheyne, George (1671-1743)

Date: Friday, July 31, 1724

"The true Use of Titles, is, That they may serve, as shining Lights, to lay open and illustrate, the spacious Chambers of a Mind well-furnished."

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1731

"So if the Knowledge of Corporeal Things were but a Secondary and Derivative Result from Sense, (though it cannot be conceived that the Passion of Sense should ray upon the Intellect, so as to beget a Secondary Passion there, any more than one Shadow should cast another) then Knowledge would be m...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1731

"And I have in like manner in this antecedent Discourse, endeavoured to shew that Wisdom, Knowledge, Mind and Intellect, are no thin Shadows or Images of corporeal and sensible Things, nor do result secondarily out of Matter and Body, and from the Activity and Impressions thereof; but have an ind...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1748, 1754

"[T]his Perception is not a Creature of the Mind, but a Ray emanating directly from the Father of Lights, a fair genuine Stamp of his Hand, who impressed every vital and original Energy on the Mind"

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: Saturday, November 9, 1751

"But it is generally agreed, that few men are made better by affluence or exaltation; and that the powers of the mind, when they are unbound and expanded by the sunshine of felicity, more frequently luxuriate into follies, than blossom into goodness."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)