The human body is a machine which winds its own springs. It is the living image of perpetual movement. Without food, the soul pines away, goes mad, and dies exhausted. ...[H]eavy food makes a dull and heavy mind whose usual traits are laziness and indolence. ... everything depends on the way our machine is running.  

(Julien Offray de La Mettrie, 1747)

Soul or mind functions through the association of ideas.

David Hartley: vibrations in nerves correspond to mental associations.

Mind explained through natural laws, not metaphysical substances.

Emphasizes memory, habit, and experience over rational soul.

Bridge between empiricism and early psychology.

Shift from soul as essence to mind as structure of learned relations.