At last, having with much ado cleansed and cleared her mind of these dusty and misty particles, she endeavoured to create a world according to Aristotle’s opinion; but remembering that her mind, as most of the learned hold it, was immaterial, and that, according to Aristotle’s principle, out of nothing, nothing could be made; she was forced also to desist from that work, and then she fully resolved, not to take any more patterns from the ancient philosophers, but to follow the opinions of the moderns; and to that end, she endeavoured to make a world according to Descartes’s opinion; but when she had made the aethereal globules, and set them a moving by a strong and lively imagination, her mind became so dizzy with their extraordinary swift turning round, that it almost put her into a swoon; for her thoughts, but their constant tottering, did so stagger, as if they had all been drunk: wherefore she dissolved that world, and began to make another, according to Hobbes’s opinion; but when all the parts of this imaginary world came to press and drive each other, they seemed like a company of wolves that worry sheep, or like so many dogs that hunt after hares; and when she found a reaction equal to those pressures, her mind was so squeezed together, that her thoughts could neither move forward nor

At last, when the Duchess saw that no patterns would do her any good in the framing of her world; she was resolved to make a world of her own invention, and this world was composed of sensitive and rational self-moving matter; indeed, it was composed only of the rational, which is the subtlest and purest degree of matter; for as the sensitive did move and act both to the perceptions and consistency of the body, so this degree of matter at the same point of time (for though the degrees are mixed, yet the several parts may move several ways at one time) did move to the creation of the imaginary world; which world after it was made, appeared so curious and full of variety, so well ordered and wisely governed, that it cannot possibly be expressed by words, nor the delight and pleasure which the Duchess took in making this World-of-her-own.

In the meantime the Empress was also making and dissolving several worlds in her own mind, and was so puzzled, that she could not settle in any of them; wherefore she sent for the Duchess, who being ready to wait on the Empress, carried her beloved world along with her, and invited the Empress’s soul to observe the frame, order and government of it. Her Majesty was so ravished with the perception of it, that her soul desired to live in the Duchess’s world: But the Duchess advised her to make such another world in her own mind; for, said she, your Majesty’s mind is full of rational corporeal motions; and the rational motions of my mind shall assist you by the help of sensitive expressions, with the best instructions they are able to give you.

The Empress being thus persuaded by the Duchess to make an imaginary world of her own, followed her advice; and after she had quite finished it, and framed all kinds of creatures proper and useful for it, strengthened it with good laws, and beautified it with arts and sciences; having nothing else to do, unless she did dissolve her imaginary world, or made some alterations in the Blazing-World, she lived in; which yet she could hardly do, by reason it was so well ordered that it could not be mended; for it was governed without secret and deceiving policy; neither was there any ambitious, factions, malicious detractions, civil dissentions, or home-bred quarrels, divisions in religion, foreign wars, etc.