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

"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

"Cruelly kind, press inward, on my Heart; / But fright not Reason, cling not to my Thought, / Blot, blot Remembrance out, strike Home, at Life, / Pour, all at once, Oblivion on my Soul, / And quench me, into Quiet."

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1732-5

"Thus, being by many Meditations of him (those Epistles written to him in his rasa Tabula, his Soul; than which nothing was more [end page 57] frequent; as appears by this Sentence, written not many Years since-- 'Nullus fuit Dies per hos multos Annos, in quo semel de Morte mea cogitavi') ...

— Peck, Francis (1692-1743)

Date: 1733, 1742

"I take the Mind or Soul of Man not to be so perfectly indifferent to receive all Impressions, as a Rasa Tabula, or white Paper."

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1733

"[M]eeting virtues" may be "perfectly imprest / On sacred Sheets, in thy Ethereal Breast"

— Masters, Mary (1694-1771)

Date: 1733-1735

"Various rude Arts the untaught Ancients knew / To fix Ideas e'er they fled away, / And Images of Thought to Sight convey. / Brass, Wax, or Wood the Characters retain'd, / Some liv'd on Slates, and some the Canvas stain'd; / Some trac'd in Iv'ry, or engrav'd on Stone, / Or sunk in Clay, e're Bi...

— Bowden, Samuel (fl. 1733-1761)

Date: 1742 [see first edition, 1733]

"The Mind, like a Tabula rasa, easyly receives the first Impression; and, like that, when the first Impression is deeply made, it with Difficulty admits of an Erasement of the first Characters, which in some Minds are indelible"

— Cooke, Thomas (1703-1756)

Date: 1733

"My head and heart thus flowing thro' my quill, / Verse-man or Prose-man, term me which you will."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)