Date: 1767

"Thus it appears to be in every respect a proper counterbalance to the RAMBLING and VOLATILE power of IMAGINATION. The one, perpetually attempting to soar, is apt to deviate into the mazes of error; while the other arrests the wanderer in its vagrant course, and compels it to follow the path of n...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1767

"Nature supplies the materials of his compositions; his senses are the under-workmen, while Imagination, like a masterly Architect, superintends and directs the whole. Or, to speak more properly, Imagination both supplies the materials, and executes the work, since it calls into being 'things tha...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1770

"But this faculty [Reason] has been much perverted, often to vile, and often to insignificant purposes; sometimes chained like a slave or malefactor, and sometimes soaring in forbidden and unknown regions."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1770

"What is it to which a wise man will pay more attention, than to his reason and conscience, those divine monitors by which he is to judge even of religion itself, and which he is not at liberty to disobey, though an angel from heaven should command him?"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1770

"We are informed by Father MALEBRANCHE, that the senses were at first as honest faculties as one could desire to be endued with, till after they were debauched by original sin; an adventure, from which they contracted such an invincible propensity to cheating, that they are now continually lying ...

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1774

"By means of it, these ideas, like a well-disciplined army, fall, of their own accord, into rank and order, and divide themselves into different classes according to their different relations."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"Thus imagination is no unskilful architect; it collects and chuses the materials; and though they may at first lie in a rude and undigested chaos, it in a great measure, by its own force, by means of its associating power, after repeated attempts and transpositions, designs a regular and well-pr...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"It is justly observed by Quintilian, that every fiction of the human fancy is approved in the moment of its production. The exertion of the mind which is requisite in forming it, is agreeable; and the face of novelty which infant conceptions wear, fails not to recommend them promiscuously, till ...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"Association could not recal the idea of the design, in order to bring back fancy when it has wandered from it, if judgment did not inform us that it had wandered, by perceiving the tendency of the ideas which it has suggested. The finest imagination, totally destitute of assistance from judgment...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"In this manner, as a master-builder has his materials prepared by inferiour workmen, or as a history painter is provided with his colours by the labour of others, so the faculty of invention often receives the entire ideas which it exhibits, from the inferiour faculties, and employs itself only...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)