Date: January 30, 1770, 1771

"I prove it thus: The mind has no doubt a faculty of comparing objects or ideas; but it is found invariably to judge and act from a preponderancy to that action or opinion which is the most suited to yield it satisfaction present or future: but if this preponderancy depends entirely on the organi...

— Author Unknown

Date: 1770

"That the mind of man, previous to the information of the senses, is a tabula rasa, a blank, without ideas, without knowledge, is a doctrine too well supported by this great master of reason to suffer a shock."

— Baker, William (1742-1785)

Date: 1771

"As the Wax would not be adequate to its business of Signature, had it not a Power to retain, as well as to receive; the same holds of the SOUL, with respect to Sense and Imagination."

— Harris, James (1709-1780)

Date: 1771

"For were that mind, what some suppose, a mere tabula rasa upon its first coming into the world, a pure and perfect blank, without one single impression; who can deny that it would be right, that it would be humane and wise, to make, in the earliest moments, those impressions upon it, whic...

— Dodd, William (1729-1777)

Date: 1771

"The infant mind at coming to the world, is a meer rasa tabula, destitute of all ideas and materials of reflection."

— Usher, James (1720-1771)

Date: 1771

"It is a charte blanche, ready for receiving the inscriptions of sense; yet it behoves us carefully to observe, that it differs from a rasa tabula or a sheet of clean paper, in the following respect, that you may write on clean paper; that sugar is bitter, wormwood sweet, fire and f...

— Usher, James (1720-1771)

Date: 1771, 1776

"'Could History man's secret heart reveal, / 'And what imports a heaven-born mind to learn, / 'Her transcripts to explore what bosom would not yearn!"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1772

" Thy Patriot worth above all Art, / Shall live, engraven on the Heart"

— Whyte, Samuel (1733-1811)

Date: 1773

Materialist philosophers describe "scoring Traces on the Paper Soul, / Blank, shaven white, they fill th' unfurnish'd Pate / With new Idéas, none of them innate."

— Byrom, John (1692-1763)

Date: 1773

One may blot from his mind "the idea of future retribution"

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)