Date: 1604

"How are the Soule and Body, Spirite and Flesh coupled together, what chaynes, what fetters imprison a spirituall Substance, an immortal Spirit in so base, stinking; and corruptible a carkasse?"

— Wright, Thomas (c. 1561-1623)

Date: 1604

"For, as the Ratte running behinde a paynted cloth, betrayeth her selfe; even so, a Passion lurking in the heart, by thoughts and speech discovereth it selfe, according to the common Proverbe, ex abundantia cordis os loquitur, from the aboundance of heart, the tongue speaketh: for as a Riv...

— Wright, Thomas (c. 1561-1623)

Date: 1606

To properly prepare a soul for God, one must "qualify it, cleanse it, strip it, and denude it of all opinion, belief, inclination, make it like a white sheet of paper, dead to itself and the world, so that God may live and operate in it."

— Charron, Pierre (1541-1603)

Date: 1641

A geometrical argument fills the mind and allows one to see everything at a single glance

— Mersenne, Marin (1588-1648)

Date: 1641

A calm mind, free from the hurly-burly of external things, may fix its gaze on itself

— Arnauld, Antoine (1612-1694)

Date: 1641

"But if the entire soul is something of this kind, why should you, who may be thought of as the noblest part of the soul, not be regarded as being, so to speak, the flower, or the most refined and pure and active part of it?"

— Gassendi, Pierre (1592-1655)

Date: 1641

The self may be imagined as a "pure, transparent, rarefied substance like a wind."

— Gassendi, Pierre (1592-1655)

Date: 1641

"Now if we are to become aware of something, it is necessary for the thing to act on the cognitive faculty by transmitting its semblance to the faculty or by informing the faculty with its semblance. Hence it seems clear that the faculty itself, not being outside itself, cannot transmit a semblan...

— Gassendi, Pierre (1592-1655)

Date: 1641

"If you do not accept this, then you must untie the knot which in your view must be binding us with adamantine bonds and preventing our mind from soaring above every kind of body."

— Mersenne, Marin (1588-1648)

Date: 1641

"You may say that you occupy the citadel in your brain and there receive whatever messages are transmitted by the animal spirits which move through the nerves, and sense-perception thus occurs there, where you dwell, despite the fact that it is said to occur throughout the body."

— Gassendi, Pierre (1592-1655)