Date: 1748, 1749
"The former have explored and unravelled the labyrinth of Man. They alone have discovered to us those hidden springs concealed under a cover, which hides from us so many wonders."
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: 1748, 1749
"Man is a machine so compound, that it is impossible to form at first a clear idea thereof, and consequently to define it. This is the reason, that all the enquiries the philosophers have made a priori, that is, by endeavouring to raise themselves on the wings of the understanding have proved ine...
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: 1748, 1749
"In proportion as the motion of the blood grows calm, a soft soothing sense of peace and tranquility spreads itself over the whole machine; the soul finds itself sweetly weighed down with slumber, and sinks with the fibres of the brain: it becomes thus paralytic as it were, by degrees, together w...
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: 1748, 1749
"The human body is a machine that winds up its own springs: it is a living image of the perpetual motion."
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: 1748, 1749
"We think not, nay, we are not honest men, but as we are chearful, or brave; all depends on the manner of winding up the machine."
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: 1748, 1749
"Is there any further occasion, to prove that man is but an animal, made up of a number of springs, which are all put in motion by each other; and yet we cannot tell to which part of the human structure first set her hand. If these springs differ amongst themselves, this arises from their particu...
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: 1748, 1749
"The body may be consider'd as a clock, and the fresh chyle we may look upon as the former of that clock."
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
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"
preview | full record— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)
Date: 1751, 1777
"We may as well imagine, that minute wheels and springs, like those of a watch, give motion to a loaded wagon, as account for the origin of passion from such abstruse reflections."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
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."
preview | full record— Brown, John (1715-1766)