Date: 1751

"In other cases, where the field of choice is wider, and where opposite motives counterbalance and work against each other, the mind fluctuates for a while, and feels itself more loose: but, in the end, must as necessarily be determined to the side of the most powerful motive, as the balance, aft...

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1751

"The laws of mind, and the laws of matter, are in this respect perfectly similar; tho', in making the comparison, we are apt to deceive ourselves."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1751

"A weak motive makes some impression: but, in opposition to one more powerful, it has no effect to determine the mind. In the precise same manner, a small force will not overcome a great resistance; nor the weight of an ounce in one scale, counter-balance a pound in the other."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1751

"His mind is passive in receiving impressions of things as good or ill: according to these impressions, the last judgment of the understanding is necessarily formed; which the will, if considered as different from the last judgment of the understanding, necessarily obeys, as is fully shown; and t...

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1751

"His mind does not receive the impression of the moral world, in the same manner, as wax receives the impression of a seal. It does not reflect the image of it, in the same manner, as a mirror reflects its images: it has a peculiar cast and turn given to its conceptions, admirably ordered to exal...

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1751

"Nor is the lively impression, even in this case, the cause of belief, but only the occasion of it, by diverting the attention of the mind, from itself and its situation."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1751

"Mankind would be in a perpetual reverie; ideas would be constantly floating in the mind; and no man be able to connect his ideas with himself."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1751

"A reverie is nothing else, but a wandering of the mind through its ideas, without carrying along the perception of self."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1751

"It has been urged in support of the above doctrine, that nothing is present to the mind, but the impressions made upon it, and that it cannot be conscious of any thing but what is present."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Date: 1751

"Tho' an impression is made upon the mind, by means of the image painted upon the retina, whereby the external object is perceived; yet nature has carefully concealed this impression from us, in order to remove all ambiguity, and to give us a distinct feeling of the object itself, and of that only."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)