Date: 1731

"Just in the same manner Nature doth as it were talk to us in the Outward Objects of Sense, and import Various Sentiments, Ideas, Phantasms, and Cogitations, not by stamping or impressing them passively upon the Soul from without, but only by certain Local Motions from them, as it were dumb Signs...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1731

"But the Soul, as by a certain secret Instinct, and as it were by Compact, understanding Nature's Language, as soon as these Local Motions are made in the Brain, doth not fix its Attention immediately upon those Motions themselves, as we do not use to do in Discourse upon meer Sounds, but present...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1731

"Wherefore here is a Double Errour committed by Vulgar Philosophers; First, That they make the Sensible Ideas and Phantasms to be totally impressed from without in a gross corporeal Manner upon the Soul, as It were upon a dead Thing; and, Secondly, That then they suppose the Intelligible Ideas, t...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1731

"To which Purpose they have ingeniously contrived and set up an Active Understanding, like a Smith or Carpenter, with his Shop or Forge in the Brain, furnished with all necessary Tools and Instruments for such a Work."

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

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: 1731

"But he that can believe that all human Knowledge, Wisdom, and Prudence, has no other Source and Original than the Radiations and Impresses of the dark Matter, and the fortuitous and tumultuous Jumblings thereof; it is justly to be suspected, that he is too near akin to those antient Theologues t...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1731

"Not that the Anticipations of Morality spring meerly from intellectual Forms and notional Idea's of the Mind, or from certain Rules or Propositions, arbitrarily printed upon the Soul as upon a Book, but from some other other more inward, and vital Principle, in intellectual Beings, as such, wher...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1731

"And I have in like manner in this antecedent Discourse, endeavoured to shew that Wisdom, Knowledge, Mind and Intellect, are no thin Shadows or Images of corporeal and sensible Things, nor do result secondarily out of Matter and Body, and from the Activity and Impressions thereof; but have an ind...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1731

"[F]or since the Mind and Intellect is in it self a more real and substantial Thing, and fuller of Entity than Matter and Body, those Things which are the pure Offspring of the Mind, and sprout from the Soul it self, must needs be more real and substantial than those Things which blossom from the...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1731

The "Cognoscitive Power of the Soul" unfolds and displays itself, "As the Spermatick or Plastick Power doth Virtually contain within it self, the Forms of all the Several Organical Parts of Animals, and displays them gradually and Successively, framing an Eye-here and an Ear there."

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)