Date: 1736, 1737, 1734-1741

"We must examine every thing, as if we were a tabula rasa."

— Bayle, Pierre (1647-1706); Anonymous

Date: 1755

A stamp may be settled deep into the mind

— Locke [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]

Date: 1755

"These simple ideas, offered to the mind, the understanding can no more refuse, nor alter, nor blot out, than a mirrour can refuse, alter, or obliterate, the images which the objects produce"

— Locke [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]

Date: 1755

Heads overfull of matter, be like pens over full of ink, which will sooner blot, than make any fair letters at all.

— Ascham's Schoolmaster [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]

Date: 1755

"Though God has given us no innate ideas of himself, though he has stampt no original characters on our minds, wherein we may read his being; yet having furnished us with those faculties our minds are endowed with, he hath not left himself without witness."

— Locke [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]

Date: 1755

"If the organs of perception, like wax overhardened with cold, will not receive the impression of the seal; or, like wax of a temper too soft, will not hold it."

— Locke [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]

Date: 1755

"He that brings this love to thee, / Little knows this love in me; / And by him seal up thy mind."

— Shakespeare [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]

Date: 1755

"That natural and indelible signature of God, which human souls, in their first origin, are supposed to be stampt with"

— Bentley [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]

Date: 1797

"Tabula rasa. Lat.--'A shaved or smoothed tablet.'--His mind is a tabula rasa--it is a mere blank."

— MacDonnel, David Evans (fl. 1797)