Date: c. 501 B.C.
"For souls it is death to become water, and for water death to become earth. Water comes into existence out of earth, and soul out of water."
preview | full record— Heraklitus (fl. 504-1 BCE)
Date: w. 350 B.C.
"This explains why, in those who are strongly moved owing to passion, or time of life, no memory is formed; just as no impression would be formed if the movement of the seal were to impinge on running water; while there are others in whom, owing to the receiving surface being frayed, as happens t...
preview | full record— Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
Date: 1632
"Looke as it is with a Gold smith that melteth the metall that he is to make a vessell of, if after the melting thereof, there follow a cooling, it had beene as good it had never beene melted, it is as hard, haply harder, as unfit, haply unfitter, then it was before to make vessell of; but after ...
preview | full record— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)
Date: 1641
"I am not that structure of limbs which is called a human body. I am not even some thin vapour which permeates the limbs - a wind, fire, air, breath, or whatever I depict in my imagination; for these are things which I have supposed to be nothing."
preview | full record— Descartes, René (1596-1650)
Date: 1651, 1668
"All fancies are motions within us, relics of those made in the sense: and those motions that immediately succeeded one another in the sense, continue also together after sense: insomuch as the former coming again to take place, and be predominant, the latter followeth, by coherence of the matter...
preview | full record— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)
Date: 1664
"Indeed, one may compare the nerves of the machine I am describing with the pipes in the works of these fountains, its muscles and tendons with the various devices and springs which serve to set them in motion, its animal spirits with the water which drives them, the heart with the source of the ...
preview | full record— Descartes, René (1596-1650)
Date: 1664
"And finally, when a rational soul is present in this machine it will have its principal seat in the brain, and reside there like the fountain-keeper who must be stationed at the tanks to which the fountain's pipes return if he wants to produce, or prevent, or change their movements in some way."
preview | full record— Descartes, René (1596-1650)
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 ...
preview | full record— Westminster Assembly (1643-1652)
Date: 1686, 1689, 1697
"Learning ought to be infus'd into the Scholar like spirits into a Bottle, by little and little, for whosoever attempts to pour in all at once, may in all likelihood spill a great part, and in a great measure fill the Vessel with Wind and Air."
preview | full record— Nourse, Timothy (c.1636–1699)
Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706
Surveying the "Powers of our own Minds" is like fathoming "the depths of the Ocean": "'Tis of great use to the Sailor to know the length of his Line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the Ocean. 'Tis well he knows, that it is long enough to reach the bottom, at such Places as are ...
preview | full record— Locke, John (1632-1704)