Date: 1704

"Upon these and the like reasons, certain objectors pretend to put it beyond all doubt that there must be a sort of preternatural spirit, possessing the heads of the modern saints; and some will have it to be the heat of zeal working upon the dregs of ignorance, as othe...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"Some again think that when our earthly tabernacles are disordered and desolate, shaken and out of repair, the spirit delights to dwell within them, as houses are said to be haunted, when they are forsaken and gone to decay."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: March 16, 1696/7; 1708

"I fansy I pretty well guess what it is that some Men find mischievous in your 'Essay': 'Tis opening the Eyes of the Ignorant, and rectifying the Methods of Reasoning, which perhaps may undermine some received Errors, and so abridge the Empire of Darkness; wherein, though the Subject wander deplo...

— Molyneux, William (1656-1698)

Date: 1708, 1737, 1742

"Je ne suis nullement pour la tabula rasa de Aristote, & il y a quelque chose de solide dans ce que Platon appelloit le reminiscence."

— Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716)

Date: 1708, 1714

"The Human Mind and Body are both of 'em naturally subject to Commotions: and as there are strange Ferments in the Blood, which in many Bodys occasion an extraordinary discharge; so in Reason too, there are heterogeneous Particles which must be thrown off by Fermentation."

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1708, 1714

"They are certainly as ill Physicians in the Body-Politick, who wou'd needs be tampering with these mental Eruptions; and under the specious pretence of healing this Itch of Superstition, and saving Souls from the Contagion of Enthusiasm, shou'd set all Nature in an uproar, and turn a few innocen...

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1708, 1714

"For the Bodys of the Prophets, in their State of Prophecy, being not in their own power, but (as they say themselves) mere passive Organs, actuated by an exterior Force, have nothing natural, or resembling real Life, in any of their Sounds or Motions: so that how aukardly soever a Puppet-Shew ma...

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1708, 1714

"For besides that our Reason, which knows the Cheat, will never rest thorowly satisfy'd on such a Bottom, but turn us often a-drift, and toss us in a Sea of Doubt and Perplexity."

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1708, 1714

"Methinks, my Lord, it wou'd be well for us, if before we ascended into the higher Regions of Divinity, we wou'd vouchsafe to descend a little into ourselves, and bestow some poor Thoughts upon plain honest Morals."

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1708, 1714

"But the knowledg of our Passions in their very Seeds, the measuring well the Growth and Progress of Enthusiasm, and the judging rightly of its natural Force, and what command it has over our very Senses, may teach us to oppose more successfully those Delusions which come arm'd with the specious ...

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)