Date: 1710, 1734
"For example, the will is termed the motion of the soul: this infuses a belief, that the mind of man is as a ball in motion, impelled and determined by the objects of sense, as necessarily as that is by the stroke of a racket."
preview | full record— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)
Date: 1715-1720
"This strong and ruling Faculty was like a powerful Planet, which in the Violence of its Course, drew all things within its Vortex."
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1717, 1736
"As into air the purer spirits flow, / And sep'rate from their kindred dregs below; / So flew the soul to its congenial place"
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
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...
preview | full record— Cheyne, George (1671-1743)
Date: 1732
"Gorgias hath gone further, demonstrating man to be a piece of clock-work or machine; and that thought or reason are the same thing as the impulse of one ball against another."
preview | full record— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)
Date: January 1739
"An idea assented to feels different from a fictitious idea, that the fancy alone presents to us: and this different feeling I endeavour to explain by calling it a superior force, or vivacity, or solidity, or firmness, or steadiness."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1744, 1772, 1795
"'Twas thus, if ancient fame the truth unfold, / Two faithful needles, from the informing touch / Of the same parent-stone, together drew / Its mystic virtue, and at first conspir'd / With fatal impulse quivering to the pole."
preview | full record— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)
Date: 1751
"The mind, therefore, in producing the vital and other involuntary motions, does not act as a rational, but as a sentient principle; which, without reasoning upon the matter, is as necessarily determined by an ungrateful sensation or stimulus affecting the organs, to exert its power, in bringing ...
preview | full record— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)
Date: 1760-7
"A man and his HOBBY-HORSE, tho' I cannot say that they act and re-act exactly after the same manner in which the soul and body do upon each other: Yet doubtless there is a communication between them of some kind, and my opinion rather is, that there is something in it more of the manner of elect...
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)
Date: 1775
"Also those phenomena in nature which depend upon gravity, electricity, &c. are no less various and complex; and the more we know of nature, the more particular facts, and particular laws, we are able to reduce to simple and general laws: insomuch that now it does not appear impossible, but that,...
preview | full record— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)