Date: 1664

"You can think of our machine's heart and arteries, which push the animal spirits into the cavities of its brain, as being like the bellows of an organ, which push air into the wind-chests; and you can think of external objects, which stimulate certain nerves and cause spirits contained in the ca...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1667

"Good Conscience, as Davids Instrument, / Drives away th'evil Spirit of discontent."

— Billingsley, Nicholas (bap. 1633, d. 1709)

Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674

"For I no sooner in my heart divined, / My heart, which by a secret harmony / Still moves with thine, joined in connexion sweet, / That thou on earth hadst prospered, which thy looks / Now also evidence, but straight I felt, / Though distant from thee worlds between, yet felt, / That I must afte...

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674

"Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move / Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird / Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid / Tunes her nocturnal note."

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

Date: 1676

"Music so softens and disarms the mind."

— Etherege, Sir George (1636-1691/2)

Date: 1683

"Reason at last, by her all-conquering arts, / Reduced these savages, and tuned their hearts."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700) [Poem ascribed to]

Date: 1684

"No Discord in thy Soul did rest, / Save what its Harmony increast."

— Oldham, John (1653-1683)

Date: 1684

"Since Harmony, like Fire to VVax, does fit / The softned Heart Impressions to admit."

— Behn, Aphra (1640?-1689)

Date: 1684

"Such a soft Air thy well-tun'd Sweetness sway'd, / As told thy Soul of Harmony was made;"

— Oldham, John (1653-1683)

Date: 1686

"My Guts are grumbling a kind of Tune, Like the Base Pipes of an Organ: I am starv'd into a Substance so thin, that my Body is transparent; you may see my heart, and the appurtenances, hang up here in its mortal Closet, as easily as a Candle in a Lanthorn."

— D'Urfey, Thomas (1653?-1723)