Date: 1741, 1742, 1755
"For it was Aristotle's opinion, who compared the soul to a 'rasa tabula', that human sensations and reflections were passions: These therefore are what he finely calls, the 'passive intelligent'; which, he says, shall cease, or is corruptible."
preview | full record— Warburton, William (1698-1779)
Date: Tuesday, August 7, 1750
"But the images which memory presents are of a stubborn and untractable nature, the objects of remembrance have already existed, and left their signature behind them impressed upon the mind, so as to defy all attempts of rasure or of change."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1750
"The Soul is a Tabula rasa, and gets all it knows thro' the Body; so there is no Law implanted in the Soul."
preview | full record— Bate, Julius (1711-1771)
Date: February 4, 1752
"My parents, though otherwise not great philosophers, knew the force of early education, and took care that the blank of my understanding should be filled with impressions of the value of money."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1754
"And so Dr. Edwards remarks of Socinus, that Adam, according to Him, had only the Faculty of Understanding, but none of the Accomplishments of it: His Mind being a pure rasa tabula, capable indeed of any Impressions, but having no Characters of Wisdom engraven upon it, by the Finger of God, when ...
preview | full record— Holloway, Benjamin (1690/1-1759)
Date: 1756
"This heart is become a mere rasa tabula; you must help it to the [GREEK CHARACTERS], you must lay in it the foundation of natural religion, (i.e. "the dictates of common sense, for natural religion, according to Mr. H. is nothing else,) if you would raise the superstr...
preview | full record— Patten, Thomas (1714-1790)
Date: 1757
"And whatever any talk of (the rasa tabula,) an indifferency by nature, to virtue or vice: never could I find any such thing; but all men inclined the wrong way: and abundance of work, by discipline, and the grace of God, to make any one better than the rest."
preview | full record— Jenks, Benjamin (bap. 1648, d. 1724)
Date: September 1, 1759.
" Ideas are retained by renovation of that impression which time is always wearing away, and which new images are striving to obliterate."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1765
"Do thou O Tablet, either both, or nothing; either let thy words and sense go together, or be thy bosom a rasa tabula."
preview | full record— Warburton, William (1698-1779)
Date: 1771
"For were that mind, what some suppose, a mere tabula rasa upon its first coming into the world, a pure and perfect blank, without one single impression; who can deny that it would be right, that it would be humane and wise, to make, in the earliest moments, those impressions upon it, whic...
preview | full record— Dodd, William (1729-1777)