Date: 1712

"Tell us, Lucretius, Epicurus, tell, / And you in Wit unrival'd shall excel, / How thro' the outward Sense the Object flies, / How in the Soul her Images arise. / What Thinking, what Perception is, explain; / What all the airy Creatures of the Brain; / How to the Mind a Thought reflected goes, / ...

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1714

"Have you examin'd / Into your inmost Heart, and try'd at leisure / The several secret Springs that move the Passions? / Has Mercy fix'd her Empire there so sure, / That Wrath and Vengeance never may return?"

— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)

Date: 1715

"Musick's the Spring made by Divinest Art, / To move the Vital Machine of Man's Heart, / And circulate with Pow'r thro' ev'ry Part."

— Oldisworth, William (1680-1734)

Date: 1719

"There are some secret moving Springs in the Affections, which when they are set a going by some Object in View, or be it some Object, though not in View, yet render'd present to the Mind by the Power of Imagination, that Motion carries out the Soul by its Impetuosity to such violent eager Embrac...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1722

"There is nothing so absurd, so surfeiting, so ridiculous as a Man heated by Wine in his Head, and a wicked Gust in his Inclination together; he is in the possession of two Devils at once, and can no more govern himself by his Reason than a Mill can Grind without Water."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1723

"Can'st say what diff'rent Turns the Spirits take, / When they of diff'rent Kinds Impressions make; / What vital Springs those Spirits in their Flight / Strike to cause Torment, what to give Delight."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1727

"To see a Fool, a Fop, believe himself inspir'd, a Fellow that washes his Hands fifty times a-day, but if he would be truly cleanly, should have his Brains taken out and wash'd, his Scull Trapan'd, and plac'd with the hind-side before, that his Understanding, which Nature plac'd by Mistake, with ...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1728

"Is not such a rational Benevolence more agreeable to rational Natures, and more meritorious than a blind Instinct that we have in common with inferior Creatures, and which operates, as it were, mechanically, both on their Minds and ours?"

— Balguy, John (1686-1748)

Date: 1726, 1729

"Let us Instance in a Watch--Suppose the several Parts of it taken to Pieces, and placed apart from each other: Let a Man have ever so exact a Notion of these several Parts, unless he considers the Respects and Relations which they have to each other, he will not have any thing like the Idea of a...

— Butler, Joseph (1692-1752)

Date: 1731

"And therefore, as he observeth out of Aristotle, 'as it is absurd to say the Soul Weaves,' (or indeed the Body either, Weaving being a mixt Action of the Man and Weaving Instruments) so it is absurd to say that the Soul alone doth Covet, Grieve or Perceive: these things proceeding from the Compo...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)