Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"In all these functions the cognitive power is sometimes passive, sometimes active; sometimes resembling the seal, sometimes the wax."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"Moreover, as we said, we should not contemplate, in one and the same visual or mental gaze, more than two of the innumerable different dimensions which it is possible to depict in the imagination."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"But I am convinced that certain primary seeds of truth naturally implanted in human minds thrived vigorously in that unsophisticated and innocent age - seeds which have been stifled in us through our constantly reading and hearing all sorts of errors"

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"So the same light of the mind which enabled them to see (albeit without knowing why) that virtue is preferable to pleasure, the good preferable to the useful, also enabled them to grasp true ideas in philosophy and mathematics, although they were not yet able fully to master such sciences"

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"It should not be thought that I have a mere analogy in mind here: we must think of the external shape of the sentient body as being really changed by the object in exactly the same way as the shape of the surface of the wax is altered by the seal."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"Secondly, when an external sense organ is stimulated by an object, the figure which it receives is conveyed at one and the same moment to another part of the body known as the 'common' sense, without any entity really passing from the one to the other. In exactly the same way I understand that w...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1696

"Pray is not the Face the Mirror of the Mind?"

— Motteux, Peter Anthony (1663-1718)

Date: 1704

"By Arguments they could not convince me, for I was able to show greater absurdities in their Religion than they could prove in mine; and particularly, in their Doctrine of Transubstantiation; Against which I argu'd several ways: As, First from the Testimony of our Senses , viz. of seeing, feelin...

— Psalmanazar, George (1679?-1763)

Date: 1704

"Thus the belief of Transubstantiation is inconsistent with the Belief of these Miracles; for if we believe them we must allow the Testimony of Sense to be a sufficient proof of them; But if we believe Transubstantiation we must renounce our Senses , and deny them to be a certain proof of any thi...

— Psalmanazar, George (1679?-1763)

Date: 1704

"For it is liable to many of the same absurdities with the Romish Doctrine, about the Eucharist; First, because it denies the certainty of our Senses in the proper objects, and consequently destroys their great Evidence of the Christian Religion, from the Miracles wrought in confirmation of it, w...

— Psalmanazar, George (1679?-1763)