Date: September, 1661

"Circumstances, which vary cases, are infinite; therefore, when all is done, much must be left to the equity and chancery of our own breasts."

— Tillotson, John (1630–1694)

Date: w. 1663, 1954 publication

"Without the help and assistance of the senses [the mind] can achieve nothing more than a labourer working in darkness behind shuttered windows"

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: November 9, 1662; 1663

"Aristotle indeed affirms the Mind to be at first a meer Rasa tabula; and that these Notions are not ingenite, and imprinted by the finger of Nature, but by the latter and more languid impressions of sense; being onely the Reports of observation, and the Result of so many repeated Experiments."

— South, Robert (1634-1716)

Date: 1664

"I suppose the body to be nothing but a statue or machine made of earth."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1664

"The parts of the blood which penetrate as far as the brain serve not only to nourish and sustain its substance, but also and primarily to produce in it a certain very fine wind, or rather a very lively and pure flame, which is called the animal spirits."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1664

"[W]e are strangers to our selves, as to the inhabitants of America"

— Glanvill, Joseph (1636-1680)

Date: 1664

"Indeed, one may compare the nerves of the machine I am describing with the pipes in the works of these fountains, its muscles and tendons with the various devices and springs which serve to set them in motion, its animal spirits with the water which drives them, the heart with the source of the ...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1664

"And finally, when a rational soul is present in this machine it will have its principal seat in the brain, and reside there like the fountain-keeper who must be stationed at the tanks to which the fountain's pipes return if he wants to produce, or prevent, or change their movements in some way."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1664

"Now I maintain that when God unites a rational soul to this machine (in a way that I intend to explain later) he will place its principal seat in the brain, and will make its nature such that the soul will have different sensations corresponding to the different ways in which the entrances to th...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1664

"You can think of our machine's heart and arteries, which push the animal spirits into the cavities of its brain, as being like the bellows of an organ, which push air into the wind-chests; and you can think of external objects, which stimulate certain nerves and cause spirits contained in the ca...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)