The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World — John Shaqi
The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-WorldNewcastle, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of
Science
The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World
Newcastle, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of
Science fiction; Utopias -- Fiction; Voyages, Imaginary -- Early works to 1800
Having thus finished their discourse of the Sun and Moon, the Empress
desired to know what Stars there were besides? But they answer'd, that
they could perceive in that World none other but Blazing Stars, and from
thence it had the name that it was called the Blazing-World; and these
Blazing-Stars, said they, were such solid, firm and shining bodies as
the Sun and Moon, not of a Globular, but of several sorts of figures:
some had tails; and some, other kinds of shapes.
After this, The Empress asked them, What kind of substance or creature
the Air was? The Bird-men answered, That they could have no other
perception of the Air, but by their own Respiration: For, said they,
some bodies are onely subject to touch, others onely to sight, and
others onely to smell; but some are subject to none of our exterior
Senses: For Nature is so full of variety, that our weak Senses cannot
perceive all the various sorts of her Creatures; neither is there any
one object perceptible by all our Senses, no more then several objects
are by one sense. I believe you, replied the Empress; but if you can
give no account of the Air, said she, you will hardly be able to inform
me how Wind is made; for they say, that Wind is nothing but motion of
the Air. The Bird-men answer'd, That they observed Wind to be more dense
then Air, and therefore subject to the sense of Touch; but what properly
Wind was, and the manner how it was made, they could not exactly tell;
some said, it was caused by the Clouds falling on each other; and
others, that it was produced of a hot and dry exhalation: which
ascending, was driven down again by the coldness of the Air that is in
the middle Region, and by reason of its leightness, could not go
directly to the bottom, but was carried by the Air up and down: Some
would have it a flowing Water of the Air; and others again, a flowing
Air moved by the blaz of the Stars.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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