Brad Pasanek (disclosure, one of my colleagues at the Annenberg Center for Communication) is working on a thesis project about metaphors for the human mind in 18th century literature; a kind of view of the steampunk vision of the brain in an era when mechanism was all.
He's put up a database with over 7,800 literary metaphors for the mind in 18th century English lit, with more to come:
"Those raging storms of wrath That so bedym the eyes of thine intent"
"Only a few succeed in arriving at these reasons with the eye of the mind, and when one does arrive, insofar as is possible, the very one who arrives does not abide in them, but as it were the eye (of the mind) itself is beaten back and repelled."
"The World a Scene of murder'd Souls appears, / Interr'd in living Sepulchres, / And moved from Place to Place in walking Tombs."
(Thanks, Brad!)
