Date: 1606

An "evill and hinderance to wisdome ... is the confusion and captivitie of his passions, and turbulent affections, whereof he must disfurnish and free himselfe, to the end he may be emptie and neate, like a white paper, and be made a subject more fit to receive tincture and impressions of wisdome...

— Charron, Pierre (1541-1603); Lennard, Sampson (d. 1633)

Date: 1609

"The vacant leaues thy mindes imprint will beare, / And of this booke, this learning maist thou taste."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1614

"That there is a God; ... This is a common notion, and impression, sealed up in the minde of every man."

— Purchas, Samuel (bap. 1577, d. 1626)

Date: 1615

"[W]e are also of [Adam's] off-spring; not that I conceive (as some blasphemously have done) that he was made out of the very essence of God, but because the image of the divine nature, is most lively imprinted in his soul and in his body, and in the substance & qualities of them both. For the So...

— Crooke, Helkiah (1576-1648)

Date: 1615

"For that first matter receiveth but particular and individual forms, and that without understanding: in the Soul are imprinted the universal forms of things, and it hath also understanding to judge of them."

— Crooke, Helkiah (1576-1648)

Date: 1635

"'Tis said that Polo the Tragedian / When hee on Stage to force some passion came, / Had his Sonnes ashes in an Urne enshrin'd / To worke more deepe impressions in his mind."

— Brathwaite, Richard (1587/8-1673)

Date: 1652

"As he could perceive no connate colours, no pictures or portraictures in his external eye: so neither could he finde any signatures in his minde till some outward objects had made some impression upon his [GREEK] his soft and plyable understanding impartially prepared for every seal."

— Culverwell, Nathanael (bap. 1619, d. 1651)

Date: 1664

"Now among these figures, it is not those imprinted on the external sense organs, or on the internal surface of the brain, which should be taken to be ideas--but only those which are traced in the spirits on the surface of the gland (where the seat of the imagination and the 'common' sense is loc...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1664

"But I shall content myself with telling you more about how the traces are imprinted on the internal part of the brain which is the seat of the memory."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1664

"I should like you to consider, after this, all the functions I have ascribed to this machine -- such as the digestion of food, the beating of the heart and arteries, the nourishment and growth of the limbs, respiration, waking and sleeping, the reception by the external sense organs of light, so...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)