Date: January 1739

"Nor is the empire of the will over our mind more intelligible ... We have command over our mind to a certain degree, but beyond that lose all empire over it: and it is evidently impossible to fix any precise bounds to our authority, where we consult not experience"

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"BUT tho' this be the only reasonable account we can give of necessity, the contrary notion is so riveted in the mind from the principles above-mention'd, that I doubt not but my sentiments will be treated by many as extravagant and ridiculous."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"The attention is on the stretch; the posture of the mind is uneasy; and the spirits being diverted from their natural course, are not governed in their movements by the same laws, at least not to the same degree, as when they flow in their usual channel."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"I have already observed, in examining the foundation of mathematics, that the imagination, when set into any train of thinking, is apt to continue even when its object fails it, and, like a galley put in motion by the oars, carries on its course without any new impulse."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: January 1739

"The thought slides along the succession with equal facility, as if it consider'd only one object; and therefore confounds the succession with the identity."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: November, 1740

"The storms and tempests were not alone removed from nature; but those more furious tempests were unknown to human breasts."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1740

"To the instructed Man [Ideas of Sensation] afford a vast Quantity of Materials to exercise Knowledge on, but without being taught that [end page 26] Knowledge to apply them to artificial Purposes, they would signify no more to us, besides assisting the Instincts to take Care of that Body they we...

— Philalethes [pseud.]

Date: 1740

"Michael Angelo used to say, that a Statuary was a Man who only pared off Superfluities, since every Block of Marble contained in it all possible Forms; but without a Phidias, a Praxiteles, or a Michael Angelo himself, the Marble will lie for ever rude shapeless Mass i...

— Philalethes [pseud.]

Date: 1740

"Some have said that the human Mind contained within it the Seeds of all Sciences; the Mind is indeed a Soil in which any of these Seeds may be sown, but it must be cultivated; and without an Husbandman it will continue a mere Tabula rasa, except what the Instincts write on it, without a p...

— Philalethes [pseud.]

Date: 1740

"I have quoted from Mr. Locke, that the human Mind is a Tabula rasa, that any Thing may be writ upon it, and that it cannot have any Thing unless it be write there, but will remain a Blank for ever; that there is a vast variety of Inscriptions made on it, which shews that the Stuff ...

— Philalethes [pseud.]