Date: 1637

"I kept uprooting from my mind any errors that might previously have slipped into it."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1637

"Now a painter cannot represent all the different sides of a solid body equally well on his flat canvas, and so he chooses one of the principal ones, sets it facing the light, and shades the others so as to make them stand out only when viewed from the perspective of the chosen side. In just the ...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1637

"Their [philosopher's] sole reason for positing such images was that they saw how easily a picture can stimulate our mind to conceive the objects depicted in it, and so it seemed to them that, in the same way, the mind must be stimulated, by little pictures formed in our head, to conceive the obj...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1637

"I supposed, too, that in the beginning God did not place in this body any rational soul or any other thing to serve as a vegetative or sensitive soul, but rather that he kindled in its heart one of those fires without light which I had already explained, and whose nature I understood to be no di...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1639

"[T]he onely rule of our conscience, is the Law of God written in our hearts."

— Ames, William (1576-1633)

Date: 1639

"There are some principles so cleare, and written in the hearts of all men, that they cannot erre to obey and practise them."

— Ames, William (1576-1633)

Date: 1639

"[T]he Law of Nature" of "the Law of God ... is naturally written in the hearts of all men."

— Ames, William (1576-1633)

Date: 1640

"Hexamater's no sterling, and I feare / What the brain coines goes scarce for currency there"

— Randolph, Thomas (bap. 1605, d. 1635)

Date: 1640

"The minds of men are after such strange waies besieged, that for to admit the true beams of things, a sincere and polisht Area is wanting"

— Watts, Gilbert (d. 1657)

Date: MS. 1640, 1650

"[T]here is no doubt, if the true doctrine concerning the law of nature, and the properties of a body politic, and the nature of law in general, were perspicuously set down, and taught in the Universities, but that young men, who come thither void of prejudice, and whose minds are yet as white pa...

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)