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Date: 1727

"Conscience, indeed, is a frightful Apparition itself, and I make no Question but it oftentimes haunts an oppressing Criminal into Restitution, and is a Ghost to him sleeping or waking: nor is it the least Testimony of an invisible World that there is such a Drummer as that in the Soul, that can ...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

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Date: Friday, April 21, 1727

"For though it is generally believed that few Statesmen are much afflicted with this terrible Inmate; yet, upon a careful Inspection of human Nature, I find it to be a vulgar Error; and am fully satisfied that, notwithstanding the outward placid Behaviour and smiling Aspect of t...

— Caleb d'Anvers [pseud. for Nicholas Amhurst, Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke, and William Pulteney, Earl of Bath]

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Date: 1731

"Feeling is nothing but the Impulse, Motion, or Action of Bodies, gently or violently impressing the Extremities or Sides of the Nerves, of the Skin of other parts of the Body, which by their Structure and Mechanism, convey this Motion to the Sentient Principle in the Brain, or the Musician."

— Cheyne, George (1671-1743)

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Date: 1731

"To which Purpose they have ingeniously contrived and set up an Active Understanding, like a Smith or Carpenter, with his Shop or Forge in the Brain, furnished with all necessary Tools and Instruments for such a Work."

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

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Date: 1731

"Where I would only demand of these Philosophers, Whether this their so expert Smith or Architect, the Active Understanding, when he goes about his Work, doth know what he is to do with these Phantasms before-hand, what he is to make of them, and unto what Shape to bring them? I...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

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Date: June 1, 1732

"Oh! give me way, come all you Furies, come, / Lodge in th'unfurnish'd Chambers of my Heart, / My Heart which never shall be let again / To any Guest but endless Misery, / Never shall have a Bill upon it more."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

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Date: 1733

"May not the sentient Principle have its Seat in some Place in the Brain, where the Nerves terminate, like the Musician shut up in his Organ-Room? May not the infinite Windings, Convolutions, and Complications of the Beginning of the Nerves which constitute the Brain, serve to d...

— Cheyne, George (1671-1743)

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Date: 1733-4

"Love, hope, and joy, fair pleasure's smiling train, / Hate, fear, and grief, the family of pain, / These mix'd with art, and to due bounds confin'd, / Make, and maintain, the balance of the mind."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

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Date: 1741

"This will gradually give the Mind a Faculty of surveying many objects at once; as a Room that is richly adorned and hung round with a great Variety of Pictures, strikes the Eye almost at once with all that Variety, especially if they have been well surveyed one by one at first: This makes it hab...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

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Date: 1742

"So should all speak: so Reason speaks in all. / From the soft whispers of that god in man, / Why fly to Folly, why to Frenzy fly, / For rescue from the blessing we possess?"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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