Date: 1724

"The sudden Gusts of these Passions being thus accounted for, when they become extreme they drive about the Blood with such a Hurricane, that Nature is overset, like a Mill by a Flood: So that what drove it only quicker round before, now intirely stops it, and renders the Countenance pale and gha...

— Cheyne, George (1671-1743)

Date: 1733

"The most difficult Problem in all the Animal OEconomy, is, to give any tolerable Account of Muscular Action or Animal Motion. The Similitude of a Machin put into Action and Motion by the Force of Water convey'd in Pipes, was the readiest Resemblance the Lazy could find to explain Muscular Motion...

— Cheyne, George (1671-1743)

Date: 1734

"And perhaps it is owing to this Medium or Canal, among other things, that having two Eyes and two Ears we do not see nor hear double."

— Forbes of Pitsligo, Alexander Forbes, Lord (1678-1762)

Date: January 1739

"[I]t follows that every thing which invigorates and enlivens the soul, whether by touching the passions or imagination, naturally conveys to the fancy this inclination for ascent, and determines it to run against the natural stream of its thoughts and conceptions"

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

Personal identity may be like a river which is totally alter'd "in less than four and twenty hours."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"Since the imagination, therefore, in running from low to high, finds an opposition in its internal qualities and principles, and since the soul, when elevated with joy and courage, in a manner seeks opposition, and throws itself with alacrity into any scene of thought or action where its courage...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"The vividness of the first conception diffuses itself along the relations, and is convey'd, as by so many pipes or canals, to every idea that has any communication with the primary one."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"The attention is on the stretch; the posture of the mind is uneasy; and the spirits being diverted from their natural course, are not governed in their movements by the same laws, at least not to the same degree, as when they flow in their usual channel."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1742, 1777

"Human minds are smaller streams, which, arising at first from the ocean [of Divintity], seek still, amid all wanderings, to return to it, and to lose themselves in that immensity of perfection"

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1742, 1777

"As a stream necessarily follows the several inclinations of the ground, on which it runs; so are the ignorant and thoughtless part of mankind actuated by their natural propensities"

— Hume, David (1711-1776)