Date: April, 1783
"Has he been at work all night without being conscious of it. Have other spirits been making impressions on his sensorium. Are there faculties in the mind quite separate one from another, which, like the eyes of Argus, may some of them be awake while others are asleep, and is the great faculty of...
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1783
Some philosophers "think, that the brains of old men, grown callous by length of time, are, like hard wax, equally tenacious of old impressions, and unsusceptible of new."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1783
"The human brain is a bodily substance; and sensible and permanent impressions made upon it must so far resemble those made on sand by the foot, or on wax by the seal, as to have certain shape, length, breadth, and deepness"
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1785
"Aristotle taught, that all the objects of our thought enter at first by the senses; and, since the sense cannot receive external material objects themselves, it receives their species; that is, their images or forms, without the matter; as wax receives the form of the seal without any of the mat...
preview | full record— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)
Date: 1789
"They [African customs] had been implanted in me with great care, and made an impression on my mind, which time could not erase, and which all the adversity and variety of fortune I have since experienced served only to rivet and record; for, whether the love of one's country be real or imaginary...
preview | full record— Equiano, Olaudah [Gustavus Vasa] (c. 1745-1797)