Date: 1747-8

"So now, Belford, as thou hast said, I am a machine at last, and no free agent."

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: October 1750, 1752, 1791

"The less the body to the view, / The soul (like springs in closer durance pent) / Is all exertion, ever new, / Unceasing, unextinguish'd, and unspent"

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: 1751

"If any Man hath found out a Kind of Motive which doth not affect himself, he hath made a deeper Investigation into the 'Springs, Weights, and Balances' of the human Heart, than I can pretend to."

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: 1752

A puppet may be "compell'd by secret Springs" just as an engine "moves with Motions not its own"

— Duncombe, John (1729-1786) [pseud.]

Date: 1753

"Passion! the spring, that all life's wheels employs, / Winds up the working thought--and heightens joys."

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1757

"I only told him civilly, Past three o'clock and a cloudy morning!-- [...] --when, heyday! says he, (there he stands, let 'en deny it if he can) and coming up to me--what have we here?-- a human Clock!--a very odd kind of Repeater upon my soul!--one of the hours 'egad strolling about, in a...

— Bacon, Phanuel (1700-1783)

Date: 1758, 1781

"Hence then the Cause of all Defects is seen, / one wrong Movement spoils the whole Machine."

— Hawkins, William (1721-1801)

Date: 1759

"As no Man mind's those Clocks that use to go / Apparently to[o] over fast, or slow."

— Butler, Samuel (1613-1680)

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

"The power which the mind evidently has of moving the various parts of the body by nerves inserted in the muscles is truly wonderful, seeing the mind neither knows the muscles to be moved, nor the machinery, by which the motion in it is to be produced: so that it is as if a musician should always...

— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)

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)