The Blazing World

The Blazing World and Other Writings by Margaret Cavendish
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As a novel written by a woman in the 1600's, I have to admire it for how brazen it is. A woman makes her way to another world via the North Pole full of animal-men and becomes their Empress. She questions their science, religion, and politics, and the answers are interesting as a study in those subjects in the 1600's. Surely, Cavendish had a bounty of curiosity about many subjects. There are flying spirits, fire rocks that burn with water, and other worlds that exist. When her friend the Duchess wants to have her own world, she is told to imagine it and her and the Empress go on and create more worlds in their mind. I couldn't help but admire Cavendish for her curiosity, her imagination, and her confidence.

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our weak Senses cannot perceive all the various sorts of her Creatures

we take more delight in Artificial delusions, than in Natural truths

were there nothing but truth, and no falsehood, there would be no occasion to dispute, and by this means we would want the aim and pleasure of our endeavors in confuting and contradicting each other; neither would one man be thought wiser than another, but all would either be alike and knowing and wise, or all would be fools

there is no beginning in Nature, no not of Particulars; by reason Nature is Eternal and Infinite, and her particulars are subject to infinite changes, and transmutations by virtue of their own Corporeal, figuraative self-motions, so that there's nothing new in Nature, not properly a beginning of any thing.

Neither will the dissection of Monsters prevent the errors of Nature's irregular actions; for by dissecting some, we cannot prevent the production of others.

Whether they could have Knowledge without Body?

I had rather die in the adventure of noble achievements, then live in obscure and sluggish security

But she wonder'd most at, was, that they should prize or value dirt more than mens lives.

wheresoever Learning is, there is most commonly also Controversie and quarreling;