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

"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: 1652

"Tis but a brief and compendious flame, shut up, and imprison'd in a narrow compasse"

— Culverwell, Nathanael (bap. 1619, d. 1651)

Date: 1652

"But the publishing and manifestation of this Law which must give notice of all this, does flow from that heavenly beame which God has darted into the soul of man; from 'the Candle of the Lord', which God has lighted up for the discovery of his owne Lawes; from that intellectual eye which God has...

— Culverwell, Nathanael (bap. 1619, d. 1651)

Date: 1652

"There are stamp'd and printed upon the being of man, some clear, and undelible principles, some first and Alphabetical Notions; by putting together of which it can spell out the Law of Nature"

— Culverwell, Nathanael (bap. 1619, d. 1651)

Date: 1652

"So that Reason is the Pen by which Nature writes this Law of her own composing; This Law 'tis publisht by Authority from heaven, and Reason is the Printer: This eye of the soul 'tis to spy out all dangers and all advantages, all conveniences and disconveniences in reference to such a being, and ...

— Culverwell, Nathanael (bap. 1619, d. 1651)

Date: 1652

"There's scatter'd in the Soul of Man some seeds of light, which fill it with a vigorous pregnancy, with a multiplying fruitfulnesse, so that it brings forth a numerous and sparkling posterity of secondary Notions, which make for the crowning and encompassing of the Soul with happinesse."

— Culverwell, Nathanael (bap. 1619, d. 1651)

Date: 1652

"And truly he might as well phansie such implanted Ideas, such seeds of light in his external eye, as such seminal principles in the eye of the minde."

— Culverwell, Nathanael (bap. 1619, d. 1651)

Date: 1652

"He did not antedate his own knowledge, nor remember the several postures of his soul, and the famous exploits of his minde before he was born; but plainly profest that his understanding came naked into the world. He shews you an [...], an abrasa tabula, a virgin-soul espousing it self to the bod...

— Culverwell, Nathanael (bap. 1619, d. 1651)