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Date: 1691

"If thro the Eye the Vigorous Object darts / Into the Brain these small Aerial Parts; / How are they entertain'd, when Crowds do come? / How do the little narrow Cells make room? / Do all, that to an Object do belong, / Into one Place unmixt with others throng?"

— Heyrick, Thomas (bap. 1649. d. 1694)

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Date: 1709, 1810

"Yet the silly wand'ring mind, / Loth to be too much confin'd, / Roves and takes her daily tours, / Coasting round the narrow shores, / Narrow shores of flesh and sense, / Picking shells and pebbles thence: / Or she sits at fancy's door, / Calling shapes and shadows to her, / Foreign visits still...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

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Date: 1711

"And reflecting on what is transacted within us, it seems to me a very diverting Scene to think when we strive to recollect something that does not then occur; how nimbly those volatil Messengers of ours will beat through all the Paths, and hunt every Enclosure of the Organ set aside for thinking...

— Mandeville, Bernard (bap. 1670, d. 1733)

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Date: 1712

"The ready Phantomes at her Nod advance, / And form the busie Intellectual Dance: / While her fair Scenes to vary, or supply, / She singles out fit Images, that lye / In Memory's Records, which faithful hold / Objects immense in secret Marks inroll'd, / The sleeping Forms at her Command awake, / ...

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

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Date: 1724

"For Nature by fix'd Laws has wisely join'd / The bright Ideas of the conscious Mind / To Motions of the liquid spirit'ous Train, / Thro' previous Traces of the humid Brain; / These, when the Soul by drowsy Sleep oppress'd / Into her private Cell retires to Rest, / Thro' beaten Paths their wand'r...

— Needler, Henry (1690-1718); Duncombe, William (1690-1769)

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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)

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Date: 1733

"May not the sentient Principle have its Seat in some Place in the Brain, where the Nerves terminate, like the Musician shut up in his Organ-Room? May not the infinite Windings, Convolutions, and Complications of the Beginning of the Nerves which constitute the Brain, serve to d...

— Cheyne, George (1671-1743)

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Date: 1761, 1790

"Ev'n from this dark confinement with delight / She [the mind] looks abroad, and prunes herself for flight; / Like an unwilling inmate longs to roam / From this dull earth, and seek her native home."

— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787); Browne, Isaac Hawkins (1706-1760)

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Date: 1814, 1816, 1896

"Solicit Fancy from celestial flights, / To wander o'er the World for frail delights / And crowd Imagination's rooms, immense, / With what relates alone to Time and Sense!"

— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)

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Date: August, 22, 2015

"Some philosophers claim that we know nothing of the external world outside our minds--nothing compared to what sways in our minds, in the long, twisting corridors of memory, the vast mental rooms with half-open doors, the ghosts chattering beneath the chandeliers of imagination."

— Lightman, Alan (b. 1948)

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The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.