Date: 1709, 1810

"Yet the silly wand'ring mind, / Loth to be too much confin'd, / Roves and takes her daily tours, / Coasting round the narrow shores, / Narrow shores of flesh and sense, / Picking shells and pebbles thence: / Or she sits at fancy's door, / Calling shapes and shadows to her, / Foreign visits still...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: Tuesday, January 15, 1712

"The Pineal Gland, which many of our Modern Philosophers suppose to be the Seat of the Soul, smelt very strong of Essence and Orange-flower Water, and was encompassed with a kind of Horny Substance, cut into a thousand little Faces or Mirrours, which were imperceptible to the naked Eye, insomuch ...

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: 1712

"She [the mind] draws ten thousand Landschapes in the Brain, / Dresses of airy Forms an endless Train, / Which all her Intellectual Scenes prepare, / Enter by turns the Stage, and disappear."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1715

"Speech was given to Man as the Image and Interpreter of the Soul: It is anime index & speculum, the Messenger of the Heart, the Gate by which all that is within issues forth, and comes into open View."

— Bulstrode, Richard, Sir (1610-1711)

Date: 1718

"Whilst, as my System says, the Mind / Is to these upper Rooms confin'd."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1723

"The Cells, and little Lodgings, Thou canst see / In Mem'ry's Hoards and secret Treasury; / Dost the dark Cave of each Idea spy, / And see'st how rang'd the crouded Lodgers lye; / How some, when beckon'd by the Soul, awake, / While peaceful Rest their uncall'd Neighbours take."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1727

"For I cannot agree that the Soul is in the Body, as in a Prison; but rather that, like a rich Nobleman, he is pleas'd to inhabit a fine Country Seat or Palace of his own Building, where he resolves to live and enjoy himself, and does so, 'till by the Fate of things his fine Palace being over-tur...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1731

"Where I would only demand of these Philosophers, Whether this their so expert Smith or Architect, the Active Understanding, when he goes about his Work, doth know what he is to do with these Phantasms before-hand, what he is to make of them, and unto what Shape to bring them? I...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: June 1, 1732

"Oh! give me way, come all you Furies, come, / Lodge in th'unfurnish'd Chambers of my Heart, / My Heart which never shall be let again / To any Guest but endless Misery, / Never shall have a Bill upon it more."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1741

"This will gradually give the Mind a Faculty of surveying many objects at once; as a Room that is richly adorned and hung round with a great Variety of Pictures, strikes the Eye almost at once with all that Variety, especially if they have been well surveyed one by one at first: This makes it hab...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)