Date: 1751

"But, as this account of the agency of the soul, and of its power over the body, scarcely seems to demand a serious answer, I shall only observe, that to imagine the soul should, with the wisest views and in the most skilful manner, at first form the body, (a work far above the utmost efforts of ...

— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)

Date: 1751

"Indeed, a few authors have run even such lengths, as to suppose the very animus, or rational soul itself, material: but surely the powers and faculties of the mind are not to be found in matter, or in any of those principles, or elements, whereof either the antients or moderns have imagined it t...

— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)

Date: 1751

"Nay, Epicurus himself, according to Lucretius, did not look upon these two as separate beings, but regarded the mind as a kind of mouvement produced by the anima or soul."

— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)

Date: 1751

"[F]or though, when we are solicitously engaged in any action, deeply involved in any thought, or strongly hurried away by any passion, we may often be unconscious of the impressions made by material causes on the organs of sense; yet we cannot but be sensible of the ideas formed within us by the...

— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)

Date: 1751

"To avoid all metaphysical disputes about different degrees of consciousness; I desire it may be understood, that here and in other parts of this Essay, when I say we are not conscious of certain impressions made on the mind by the action of material causes on the organs of the body, I mean no mo...

— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)

Date: 1751

"The mind, therefore, in producing the vital and other involuntary motions, does not act as a rational, but as a sentient principle; which, without reasoning upon the matter, is as necessarily determined by an ungrateful sensation or stimulus affecting the organs, to exert its power, in bringing ...

— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)

Date: 1751

"The bodies of brute animals are actuated by a principle of a like kind with what is placed in man, but greatly inferior with regard to the degrees of reason and intelligence which it possesses: in the more perfect brutes, this principle is plainly intelligent as well as sentient; and their actio...

— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)

Date: 1751

"In walking the streets, how many persons of one's acquaintance are every minute presented to the mind, as their pictures are painted on the retina; yet if we be alone, having our thoughts strongly turned upon a particular subject, or else be deeply engaged in conversation with a friend, we are o...

— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)

Date: 1751

"In this particular case, we must either suppose, that the impressions, made by the stars on the retina, are suffocated and lost in those stronger ones made by the illuminated atmosphere, so as never to reach the sensorium in order to excite any idea in the mind, or that if they do reach the sens...

— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)

Date: 1751

"But this discovery is by no means confined to colours as they exist out of the mind, either in the rays of light, or surfaces of bodies; but is equally true of the ideas of colours in the mind itself: for it appears, by experiments, that the idea of red and the idea of yellow, confounded in the ...

— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)