Date: c. 1603

"But do you suppose, when all the approaches and entrances to men's minds are beset and blocked by the most obscure idols -- idols deeply implanted and, as it were, burned in -- that any clean and polished surface remains in the mirror of the mind on which the genuine natural light of things can ...

— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)

Date: 1605, 1640

"By which wordes he declares, not obscurely, that God hath framed the Mind of Man, as a Mirror or Glasse capable of the Image of the universall world, and as joyfull to receive the impressions thereof, as the eye joyeth to receave light; and not only delighted in the beholding, the variety of thi...

— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)

Date: 1615

"For as in that celestiall part, the Sun is predominant, by whose motion, beames, and light, all things haue their brightnesse, luster, and beauty; so in the middest of the chest, the heart resideth, whose likenesse and proportion with the Sun, is such and so great, as the ancient writers haue be...

— Crooke, Helkiah (1576-1648)

Date: 1621

"As soone as the Exterior sences, busied about the Objects which are proper for them, have gathered the formes of things which come from without, they carry them to the common sence, the which receives them, judgeth of them, and distinguisheth them; and then to preserve them in the absence of the...

— Coeffeteau, F. N. (1574-1623) [trans. into English by Edw. Grimeston]

Date: 1644, 1647

"But the fact that we feel a pain as it were in our foot does not make it certain that the pain exists outside our mind, in the foot, any more than the fact that we see light as it were in the sun, makes it certain the light exists outside us, in the sun."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1649

"And this evil was brought upon us through his own Covetousnesse, whereby he is blinded and made weak, and sees not the Law of Righteousnesse in his heart, which is the pure light of Reason, but looks abroad for it, and thereby the Creation is cast under bondage and curse, and the creator is slei...

— William Everard, John Palmer, John South, John Courton. William Taylor, Christopher Clifford, John Barker, Ferrard Winstanley, Richard Goodgroome, Thomas Starre, William Hoggrill, Robert Sawyer, Thomas Eder, Henry Bickerstaffe, John Taylor, &c,

Date: 1651

"Men are not to conceive as if his body were turned into such a substance as the sun is of, for the soul, as through a case of glass, to shine gloriously in only; but further it is united to the soul, to be acted by it, though immediately, for the soul to produce operations in it."

— Goodwin, Thomas (1600-1680)

Date: 1651, 1668

"To conclude, the light of human minds is perspicuous words, but by exact definitions first snuffed, and purged from ambiguity; reason is the pace; increase of science, the way; and the benefit of mankind, the end."

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Date: 1651, 1668

"And on the contrary, metaphors, and senseless and ambiguous words, are like ignes fatui; and reasoning upon them is wandering amongst innumerable absurdities; and their end, contention and sedition, or contempt."

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Date: 1652

"Tis but a brief and compendious flame, shut up, and imprison'd in a narrow compasse"

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