 Margaret Lucas Cavendish was a philosopher, poet, scientist, fiction-writer, and playwright who lived in the Seventeenth Century. Her work is important for a number of reasons. One is that it lays out an early and compelling version of the naturalism that is found in current-day philosophy and science. It also offers important insights that bear on recent discussions of the nature and characteristics of intelligence and the question of whether or not the bodies that surround us are minded and intelligent. Another reason that the work of Cavendish is important is that it anticipates some of the central views and arguments that are more commonly associated with figures like Thomas Hobbes and David Hume. She also offers novel and compelling responses to questions that are central to the discussions of the Seventeenth Century – for example, about whether sense perception is by means of impressions; about whether human beings are free in a libertarian or a compatibilist sense; about whether there is any true disorder in the natural world; about the limits of knowledge, and the limits of ideas and language; and about how motion is transferred between bodies. In addition, she takes on important debates in social and political philosophy, with a focus on issues of agency and authority. She asks in particular about the relation between an individual’s desire to live a life with which they identify and the receptivity that that desire encounters in the surrounding environment.