Date: 1678, 2nd edition in 1743

"But as for that prodigious paradox of Atheists, that cogitation itself is nothing but local motion or mechanism, we could not have thought it possible, that ever any many should have given entertainment to such a conceit, but that this was rather a meer slander raised upon Atheists."

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1678, 2nd edition in 1743

"That Vital Sympathy, by which our Soul is united and tied fast, as it were with a Knot, to the Body, is a thing that we have no direct Consciousness of, but only in its Effects."

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1678, 2nd edition in 1743

"For though the Geometrician perceive himself to make Lines, Triangles and Circles in the Dust, with his Finger, yet he is not aware, how he makes all those same Figures, first upon the Corporeal Spirits of his Brain, from whence notwithstanding, as from a Glass, they are reflected to him, Fancy ...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1678, 2nd edition in 1743

"Now as we have no voluntary Imperium at all, upon the Systole and Diastole of the Heart, so are we not conscious to our selves of any Energy of our own Soul that causes them, and therefore we may reasonably conclude from hence also, that there is some Vital Energy, without Animal Fancy or Synaes...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1678, 2nd edition in 1743

"So that Cogitation is in Order of Nature, before Local Motion, and Incorporeal before Corporeal Substance, the Former having a Natural Imperium upon the Latter."

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1731

"It must needs follow from hence, that Knowledge is an Inward and Active Energy of the Mind it self, and the displaying of its own Innate Vigour from within, whereby it doth Conquer, Master and Command its Objects, and so begets a Clear, Serene, Victorious, and Satisfactory Sense within it self."

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1731

"And first of all, that the Soul is not a meer Rasa Tabula, a naked and Passive Thing, which has no innate Furniture or Activity its own, nor any thing at all in it, but what was impressed on it from without."

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1731

"For those Ideas of Heat, Light, and Colours, and other Sensible things, being not Qualities really existing in the Bodies without us, as the Atomical Philosophy instructs us, and therefore not passively stamped or imprinted upon the Soul from without in the same manner that a Signature is upon a...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1731

"And therefore it [the soul] is not present with it only as a Mariner with a Ship, that is, meerly Locally, or knowingly and unpassionately present, they still continuing two distinct Things; but it is vitally united to it, and passionately present with it. And therefore when the Body is hurt, th...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1731

"Wherefore though all Cogitations be formally in the Soul, and not in the Body, yet these sensitive Cogitations being in the Soul no otherwise than as vitally united to the Body, they are not so properly the Cogitations of the Soul, as of the mixed, or both together, as Plotinus calls it, the Com...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)