Date: September 10, 1726

"To explain this, we must consider that the first Image which an outward Object imprints on our Brain is very slight; it resembles a thin Vapour which dwindles into nothing, without leaving the least track after it. But if the same Object successively offers itself several times, the Image it occ...

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 10, 1726

"Yet we must not suppose that they are continually in their Retirement; they would become useless if they were so. But on the contrary, great Numbers of them are always going to and fro; and if one of them chances to go by the Cell or Lodge of another which has the least real or imaginary conform...

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 10, 1726

"Now, according to my supposition, there being no active intelligent Being, who, by his Presence and Superintendency, governs and directs the Course of those vagabond Images, every thing in the Brain resembles the fortuitous concourse of Atoms."

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 10, 1726

"Two Images meet, and unite to each other; these two meeting with a third, it unites to them in the same manner: and this Meeting and Union continuing for some time, at last occasions a most monstrous Aggregation, very like the Chaos of the Poet, where 'Frigida cum calidis pugnant, humentia sicci...

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 10, 1726

"These united Images do sometimes separate from each other with the same facility they had joined, just like the fashionable way of marrying among the Quality; at other times, they maintain themselves in their Union, like poor Folks, without ever getting asunder; especially when this Union is the...

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 10, 1726

"In this last Case one Image of this sort never appears without its whole Retinue; and if a straggling one, in its progress thro' the Brain, chances to strike any of this Chain, all the others will appear, and chime to the last link. These sorts of Chains are what we call Habits; the Temper and P...

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 17, 1726

"And what is Education, for the most part, but stocking a Child's Brain with Chains of Images?"

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 17, 1726

"Great care had been taken taken beforehand to arm him with the utmost Rage and Fury against Fanaticism; and his Tutor employ'd all his art and skill to fasten in his Brain a long Chain of Orthodox High-Church Images. The Chain was ended in a twelvemonth; but it took up four years more to strengt...

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 17, 1726

"This Train of Images continually revolv'd in our young Parson's Brain; and to preserve them from being jostled out by any intruding Foreigners, who might dispossess the Original Orthodox Inhabitants, the first Link of the Chain was rivetted by Pride, and the two last closed up by those two insep...

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 17, 1726

"I Need not expatiate upon other Characters; for I have too good an Opinion of your Readers, to doubt of their beginning now to be sensible that most Men speak and act but from a fortuitous Concourse of Images, or a Train of them stored up in the Brain."

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)