Margaret Cavendish holds a stone up to the window of her study.

What a stone knows in its own way

Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673) was an English philosopher and writer. In her Observations she lets an imagined reader raise an objection. If reason belongs to every part of nature, must a stone possess it too?

An objection becomes an example

Cavendish accepts the challenge. The human being and the mineral consist of the same matter. Why rule out in one part of nature a capacity we recognise in another? The difficulty begins when we take the character of human perception as a measure for everything else.

I do not deny that a Stone has Reason, or doth partake of the Rational Soul of Nature as well as Man doth, because it is part of the same Matter Man consists of; but yet it has not animal or humane sense and reason, because it is not of animal kind; but being a Mineral, it has Mineral sense and reason: for it is to be observed, that as Animate self-moving Matter moves not one and the same way in all Creatures, so there can neither be the same way of knowledg and understanding, which is sense and reason, in all Creatures alike; but Nature being various, not onely in her parts, but in her actions, it causes a variety also amongst her Creatures; and hence come so many kinds, sorts and particulars of Natural Creatures, quite different from each other; though not in the General and Universal principle of Nature, which is self-moving Matter, (for in this they agree all) yet in their particular interior natures, figures and proprieties.[1]

Matter in many kinds of motion

The decisive word is “Mineral”. In Cavendish’s philosophy matter can move itself. The kind of motion varies among natural beings. Granting a stone its own kind of reason also means acknowledging a limit to what a human observer can imagine such reason to be.