Date: May 10, 1704

"The deepest account, and the most fairly digested of any I have yet met with is this, that air being a heavy body, and therefore, according to the system of Epicurus, continually descending, must needs be more so when laden and pressed down by words, which are also bodies of much weight and grav...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: Dated August 6, 1707; 1711

"The mind of man is at first (if you will pardon the expression) like a tabula rasa, or like wax, which, while it is soft, is capable of any impression, till time has hardened it."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1710, 1734

"But neither can this be said; for though we give the materialists their external bodies, they by their own confession are never the nearer knowing how our ideas are produced: since they own themselves unable to comprehend in what manner body can act upon spirit, or how it is possible it should i...

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1713, 1734

"And that outward objects by the different impressions they make on the organs of sense, communicate certain vibrative motions to the nerves; and these being filled with spirits, propagate them to the brain or seat of the soul, which according to the various impressions or traces thereby made in ...

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1713, 1734

"But the ideas perceived by sense, that is, real things, are more vivid and clear, and being imprinted on the mind by a spirit distinct from us, have not a like dependence on our will."

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1713, 1734

"You cannot say objects are in your mind, as books in your study: or that things are imprinted on it, as the figure of a seal upon wax."

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1713, 1734

"Look you, Hylas, when I speak of Objects, as existing in the Mind, or imprinted on the Senses; I wou'd not be understood in the gross, literal Sense, as when Bodies are said to exist in a place, or a Seal to make an Impression upon Wax."

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1713, 1734

"When, therefore, you say, all Ideas are occasioned by Impressions in the Brain, do you conceive this Brain or no? If you do, then you talk of Ideas imprinted in an Idea, causing that same Idea, which is absurd."

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1713, 1734

"Therefore, to explain the Phaenomena, is to shew how we come to be affected with Ideas, in that Manner and Series, wherein they are imprinted on our Senses."

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1724

"And ev'ry one begins to find / The same impression on his mind."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)