Date: c. 501 B.C.

"For souls it is death to become water, and for water death to become earth. Water comes into existence out of earth, and soul out of water."

— Heraklitus (fl. 504-1 BCE)

Date: 1641

"I am not that structure of limbs which is called a human body. I am not even some thin vapour which permeates the limbs - a wind, fire, air, breath, or whatever I depict in my imagination; for these are things which I have supposed to be nothing."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1651

"All fancies are motions within us, relics of those made in the sense: and those motions that immediately succeeded one another in the sense, continue also together after sense: insomuch as the former coming again to take place, and be predominant, the latter followeth, by coherence of the matter...

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Date: 1664

"Indeed, one may compare the nerves of the machine I am describing with the pipes in the works of these fountains, its muscles and tendons with the various devices and springs which serve to set them in motion, its animal spirits with the water which drives them, the heart with the source of the ...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1664

"And finally, when a rational soul is present in this machine it will have its principal seat in the brain, and reside there like the fountain-keeper who must be stationed at the tanks to which the fountain's pipes return if he wants to produce, or prevent, or change their movements in some way."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1670

Weakness of mind may be water-like or wax-like

— Greville, Fulke, first Baron Brooke of Beauchamps Court (1554-1628)

Date: November, 1682

"In pleasure some their glutton souls would steep; / But found their line too short, the well too deep; / And leaky vessels which no bliss could keep.

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1691

"I cannot conceive the true Cause hereof [that Men of Learning are uncouth in their discourse], unless it be, that as Plants are Choakt by over-much Moisture, and Lamps are Stifl'd with too much Oil; so are the Actions of the Mind overwhelm'd by over-abundance of Matter and Study."

— Blount, Thomas Pope, Sir (1649-1697)

Date: 1699

"Then th' Understanding without pain did climb: / Capacious, Active, Lively, and Sublime, / Clear as fair Fountains, and as pure as they, / Chast as the Morn, and open as the day."

— Pomfret, John (1667-1702)

Date: 1700

The "Trading Mind" must voyage over an Ocean, but "Resisting Rocks oppose th' Inquiring Soul,
And adverse Waves retard it as they Rowl."

— Pomfret, John (1667-1702)