Date: 1737

"You see 'tis with weak heads as with weak stomachs, they immediately throw out what they received last; and what they read floats upon the surface of their mind, like oil upon water, without incorporating."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1739-40

"The understanding, like the eye (says Mr. Locke), whilst it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own object."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: January 1739

"The mind, as well as the body, seems to be endowed with a certain precise degree of force and activity, which it never employs in one action, but at the expence of all the rest."

— 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

"Let us therefore apply this method of enquiry, which is found so just and useful in reasonings concerning the body, to our present anatomy of the mind, and see what discoveries we can make by it."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"As nature has given to the body certain appetites and inclinations, which she encreases, diminishes, or changes according to the situation of the fluids or solids, she has proceeded in the same manner with the mind."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"Are the changes of our body from infancy to old age more regular and certain than those of our mind and conduct."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"The identity, which we ascribe to the mind of man, is only a fictitious one, and of a like kind with that which we ascribe to vegetables and animal bodies."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"Since the imagination, therefore, in running from low to high, finds an opposition in its internal qualities and principles, and since the soul, when elevated with joy and courage, in a manner seeks opposition, and throws itself with alacrity into any scene of thought or action where its courage...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"The attention is on the stretch; the posture of the mind is uneasy; and the spirits being diverted from their natural course, are not governed in their movements by the same laws, at least not to the same degree, as when they flow in their usual channel."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)