Date: December 10, 1776; 1777

"The same disposition, the same desire to find something steady, substantial and durable, on which the mind can lean as it were, and rest with safety. The subject only is changed."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1777, 1810

"And oft the bard's elastic mind / To lighter images inclined; / In concord with Anacreon's measure, / Courts the jovial gods of pleasure."

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)

Date: 1777, 1810

"Well-pleased, in fancy he surveys, / With fancy's mimick tint pourtrays / The fate elysian of the swain, / Who, stranger to his nymph's disdain, / Feels the true zest of Cupid's reign, / His lasting joys enhanced by momentary pain."

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)

Date: w. 1755, 1777

"She [Nature] employs it [spiritual substance] as a kind of paste or clay; modifies it into a variety of forms and existences; dissolves after a time each modification, and from its substance erects a new form."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1777

"The minds of the negroes are contracted; because slavery destroys all the springs of the soul."

— Raynal, Guillaume Thomas (1713-1796)

Date: 1778

" In thee, by art, the demon stands confest, / But nature on thy soul has stamped the god."

— Chatterton, Thomas (1752-1770)

Date: 1778

Where is a stock of ideas stored?

— Caulfield (fl. 1778)

Date: 1767, 1778

Science may "bid the soul her own rich funds employ, / Increase her treasures, and her wealth enjoy."

— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)

Date: March, 1778

"What that power is by which the conscious spirit governs and directs various mental faculties, is, it must be confessed, utterly inexplicable as long as our souls are enclosed in material frames. While a watch is shut up in its case, we cannot see how the operations of its curious machinery are ...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: March, 1778

"And my similitude between a watch in its case, and the soul in its material frame, will, I persuade myself, be agreeable to all my readers, whose dispositions are mild, and like better to be pleased with what they read, than to attack it."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)