Date: 1682

"Our Passions are nothing else but certain Disallowable Motions of the Mind; Sudden, and Eager; which, by Frequency, and Neglect, turn to a Disease; as a Distillation brings us first to a Cough, and then to a Phthisick."

— L'Estrange, Sir Roger (1616-1704)

Date: 1682

"It may be some Question, whether such a Man goes to Heaven, or Heaven comes to Him: For a good Man is Influenc'd, by God himself; and has a kind of Divinity within him."

— L'Estrange, Sir Roger (1616-1704)

Date: 1683, 1823

A man may keep the "precious relics of the divine image from utter defacement, retaining somewhat of his primitive worth and integrity."

— Barrow, Isaac (1630-1677)

Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"This is similar to the way in which we know that the last link in a long chain is connected to the first: even if we cannot take in at one glance all the intermediate links on which the connection depends, we can have knowledge of the connection provided we survey the links one after the other, ...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"But since it is not easy to review all the connections together, and moreover, since our task is not so much to retain them in our memory as to distinguish them with, as it were, the sharp edge of our mind, we must seek a means of developing our intelligence in such a way that we can discern the...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"First, in so far as our external senses are all parts of the body, sense-perception, strictly speaking, is merely passive, even though our application of the senses to objects involves action, viz. local motion; sense-perception occurs in the same way in which wax takes on an impression from a s...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"Thirdly, the 'common' sense functions like a seal, fashioning in the phantasy or imagination, as if in wax, the same figures or ideas which come, pure and without body, from the external senses."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"In all these functions the cognitive power is sometimes passive, sometimes active; sometimes resembling the seal, sometimes the wax."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"It should not be thought that I have a mere analogy in mind here: we must think of the external shape of the sentient body as being really changed by the object in exactly the same way as the shape of the surface of the wax is altered by the seal."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1686, 1689, 1697

"As soon as ever the Parts begin to be form'd by Nature, this Animal and active Principle begins to exert its Heat and Force, being lodged in the Heart as in the Centre of the Body, from whence, as the Vessels begin also to be form'd, it distributes it self towards the extreme Regions, communicat...

— Nourse, Timothy (c.1636–1699)