Date: 1692

"In what a miserable condition do we count those, in whom it hath pleased the great Contriver of the Eyes and Sight, to shut those two little Windows of the Soul?"

— Molyneux, William (1656-1698)

Date: 1696

"Though, witness ye Powers (said she, looking up;) who, with ease can view the inmost Recesses of my Soul; and plainly see what's Acted there: Witness, I say, if I not rejoice, that Prince Emilius to Duty, and to Reason yields; quitting the Weight, the Burthen insupportable of Blind impetuous Pas...

— Pix, Mary (c.1666-1720)

Date: January 1739

"I shall therefore observe, that as the mind is endowed with a power of exciting any idea it pleases; whenever it despatches the spirits into that region of the brain, in which the idea is placed; these spirits always excite the idea, when they run precisely into the proper traces, and rummage th...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

Personal identity may be like a church, "which was formerly of brick, fell to ruin, and that the parish rebuilt the same church of free-stone, and according to modern architecture."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1779

"All our ideas derived from the senses are confusedly false and illusive; and cannot therefore be supposed to have place in a supreme intelligence: and as the ideas of internal sentiment, added to those of the external senses, compose the whole furniture of human understanding, we may conc...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1781

"What becomes of the old furniture when the new is continually introduced? In what hidden cells are these solid ideas lodged, that they may be produced again in good repair when wanted to fill the apartments of memory?"

— Rotheram, John (1725–1789)