Date: 1763 (repr. 1776); 1794 (repr. 1799)

"When actual thought is suspended, there may remain some secret power of thinking resulting from the constitution of the soul, which will exert itself when the obstruction is removed. As a bow when bent has a disposition to straiten itself again, or a clock to strike, though the hammer be held ba...

— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)

Date: 1763 (repr. 1776); 1794 (repr. 1799)

"That mind is said to be possessed of NATURAL LIBERTY, or liberty of choice, which is so constituted, as that its volitions shall not be invincibly determined by any foreign cause or consideration whatever offered to it, but by its own sovereign pleasure."

— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)

Date: 1763 (repr. 1776); 1794 (repr. 1799)

"PHILOSOPHICAL LIBERTY consists in a prevailing disposition to act according to the dictates of reason; i. e. in such a manner, as shall, all things considered, most effectually promote our happiness. A disposition to act contrary to this is MENTAL SERVITUDE: and when the mind is equally...

— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)

Date: 1763 (repr. 1776); 1794 (repr. 1799)

"To the fourth argument (which is generally called choice εν αδιαφορια) 'tis answered by the opposers of natural liberty, that no such case can occur that two objects should appear entirely equal: and if there did, then a choice would be impossible; for that would imply an effect withou...

— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)

Date: 1763 (repr. 1776); 1794 (repr. 1799)

"But this is evidently taking the question for granted: for it will not be allowed that willing is a necessary effect, which must imply a compelling efficient cause; or the mind like a balance to be moved with weights."

— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)

Date: 1763 (repr. 1776); 1794 (repr. 1799)

"That perhaps this may be a state of imprisonment to the soul, as many of the philosophers thought; and that when it is set at liberty from the body, it may obtain new and noble ways of perception and action, to us at present unknown."

— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)

Date: 1764

"The painter, the poet, the actor, the orator, the moralist, and the statesman, attempt to operate upon the mind in different ways, and for different ends; and they succeed, according as they touch properly the strings of the human frame."

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Date: 1765

"If all [the mind] had was the mere capacity to receive those items of knowledge--a passive power to do so, as indeterminate as the power of wax to receive shapes or of a blank page to receive words--it would not be the source of necessary truths"

— Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716)

Date: 1765

"A Man's House may be so fill'd with Furniture, that he shall want Room to stir; and a Man's Head may be so stuff'd with other People's Thoughts, that his own shall be stifled."

— Anonymous

Date: 1765

"I am apt to think that as Plants are choak'd with too much Moisture, and Lamps with too much Oil; so it happens to the Mind of Man, when it is embarass'd with too much Study and Matter; for being confounded with a great Variety of Things, it loses the Power of extricating itself, and so is rende...

— Anonymous