"In this particular case, we must either suppose, that the impressions, made by the stars on the retina, are suffocated and lost in those stronger ones made by the illuminated atmosphere, so as never to reach the sensorium in order to excite any idea in the mind, or that if they do reach the sensory, and create correspondent ideas, yet they are so drowned, as it were, in the stronger idea, as to escape our attention and memory, I am not insensible, that there is a real difficulty in this matter, and even some appearance of contradiction in the last supposition: for it may well be asked, what is an idea drowned in another, but a perception unperceived?"
An Essay on the Vital and Other Involuntary Motions of Animals
3 entries in ESTC (1751, 1763, 1768).<br>
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Robert Whytt, <u>An Essay on the Vital and Other Involuntary Motions of Animals</u> (Edinburgh: Printed by Hamilton, Balfour, and Neill, 1751). &lt;<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=eCz7KJ_6XYIC">Link to Google Books</a>&gt;