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Title:  Observations upon experimental philosophy to which is added The description of a new blazing world / written by the thrice noble, illustrious, and excellent princesse, the Duchess of Newcastle.
Author: Newcastle, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of, 1624?-1674.
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and Animals, which are the chief distinctions of those kinds of Creatures as are subject to our sensitive perceptions; and in all those, what variety and diffe∣rence do we find both in their exterior figures, and in their interior natures? truly such, as most of both an∣cient and modern Philosophers have imagined some of them, viz. the Elements, to be simple bodies, and the principles of all other Creatures; nay, those several Creatures do not onely differ so much from each other in their general kinds, but there is no less difference per∣ceived in their particular kinds: for example, con∣cerning Elements, what difference is there not between heavy and contracting Earth, and between light and dilating Air? between flowing Water, and ascending Fire? so as it would be an endless labour to consider all the different natures of those Creatures onely that are subject to our exterior senses. And yet who dares deny that they all consist of Matter, or are material? Thus we see that Infinite Matter is not like a piece of Clay, out of which no figure can be made, but it must be clayie, for natural Matter has no such narrow bounds, and is not forced to make all Creatures alike; for though Gold and Stone are both material, nay, of the same kind, to wit, Minerals, yet one is not the other, nor like the other. And if this be true of Matter, why may not the same be said of self-motion, which is Sense and Reason? Wherefore, in all probability of truth, there is sense and reason in a Mineral, as well as in an 0