Missing Body
I focus on Margaret Cavendish's explanation of the mind's perception of an object. The senses most commonly used when observing a subject in art are sight and touch. The collection highlights an experiment on the body of a stable and regular material. The rationale begins with the relationship between an individual observation and the instructional pattern inside the object. A rational spirit mimics a pattern within the subject, then enters the human eye, and the viewer's mind can perceive. Distinct motion is in the body of the subject according to a natural principle that the subject is, to some degree, aware of. The state of the rational spirit flows like a dance to reach out and touch the subject, and any answer to what the art subject is, or what virtue it has, can only come from this invisible action.
