Date: 101

"'For,' it was his habit to say, 'as a stone, if you cast it upward, will be brought down to the earth by its own nature, so the man whose mind is naturally good, the more you repel him, the more he turns toward that to which he is naturally inclined.'"

— Epictetus (c. 55-c.135)

Date: 1257

"Finally, love, which is the gravitational force of the soul and the origin of all spiritual attraction, tends toward self with ease, but reaches out to the neighbor with effort, and to God with still greater pain."

— St. Bonaventure [born Giovanni di Fidanza] (1217-1274)

Date: 1600

Magnetism is "of the nature of soul, surpassing the soul of man"

— Gilbert, William (1544-1603)

Date: 1607

"If the happie Daemon of Vlisses direct not the wandering planet of my witte within the decent orbe of wisedome, my stammering pen seeming far ouergon with superfluitie of phrase, yet wanting matter I answer with the poet one only word inuerted."

— Walkington, Thomas (b. c. 1575, d. 1621)

Date: 1641

Gravity is coexistence with a heavy body in the same way that the mind is coextensive with the body

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1651

"Attraction is a ministering faculty, which, as a loadstone doth iron, draws meat into the stomach, or as a lamp doth oil; and this attractive power is very necessary in plants, which suck up moisture by the root, as, another mouth, into the sap, as a like stomach."

— Burton, Robert (1577-1640)

Date: 1656

"Thales argued, that the Load-stone, and Amber had soules; the first because it drawes Iron, the second Straw."

— Stanley, Thomas (1625-1678)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"I shall not here enquire, though it may seem probable, that the Constitution of the Body does sometimes influence the Memory; since we oftentimes find a Disease quite strip the Mind of all its Ideas, and the flames of a Fever, in a few days, calcine all those Images to dust and confusion, which ...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"The Dominion of Man, in this little World of his own Understanding, being muchwhat the same, as it is in the great World of visible things: wherein his Power, however managed by Art and Skill, reaches no farther, than to compound and divide the Materials, that are made to his Hand; but can do no...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1697

"What Cause can you assign able to produce the first Thought at the end of this Sleep and Silence, in a total Ecclipse and intermission of Thinking?"

— Burnet, Thomas (c.1635-1715)