Date: Thursday, July 12, 1711

"I consider the Body as a System of Tubes and Glands, or to use a more Rustick Phrase, a Bundle of Pipes and Strainers, fitted to one another after so wonderful a Manner as to make a proper Engine for the Soul to work with."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Wednesday, June 18, 1712

"The extraordinary Severity used in most of our Schools has this fatal Effect, it breaks the Spring of the Mind, and most certainly destroys more good Genius's than it can possibly improve."

— Anonymous

Date: 1714

If we imagine a "machine whose structure makes it think, sense, and have perceptions" enlarged to the size of a mill, upon "inspecting its interior, we will only find parts that push one another, and we will never find anything to explain a perception"

— Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716)

Date: 1724

"The sudden Gusts of these Passions being thus accounted for, when they become extreme they drive about the Blood with such a Hurricane, that Nature is overset, like a Mill by a Flood: So that what drove it only quicker round before, now intirely stops it, and renders the Countenance pale and gha...

— Cheyne, George (1671-1743)

Date: September 10, 1726

"First then I lay down, as an undeniable Truth, that we have in common with other Animals a certain Machine of a curious and exquisite Workmanship, the principal Springs whereof are Imagination and Memory."

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 10, 1726

"To explain this, we must consider that the first Image which an outward Object imprints on our Brain is very slight; it resembles a thin Vapour which dwindles into nothing, without leaving the least track after it. But if the same Object successively offers itself several times, the Image it occ...

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 17, 1726

"I have now, Sir, laid open to you the Faculties of the Mind, and shewn that those of most Men consist but in a mechanical Operation, as well as those of other Animals."

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: 1727

"To see a Fool, a Fop, believe himself inspir'd, a Fellow that washes his Hands fifty times a-day, but if he would be truly cleanly, should have his Brains taken out and wash'd, his Scull Trapan'd, and plac'd with the hind-side before, that his Understanding, which Nature plac'd by Mistake, with ...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1728

"Is not such a rational Benevolence more agreeable to rational Natures, and more meritorious than a blind Instinct that we have in common with inferior Creatures, and which operates, as it were, mechanically, both on their Minds and ours?"

— Balguy, John (1686-1748)

Date: 1728 (1733)

"If the several Members, and the constituent Parts of this curious Machine, which the Mind always carries about her, have a brisk uniform Motion, and be so ballanc'd and adjusted as easily to perform all the Animal Functions, this gives a Briskness and Vivacity to the Mind, and entertains her wit...

— Campbell, Archibald (1691-1756)