critic who, with other exiled Royalists, could anticipate the day of redemption and Restoration. This dynamic is in the background of Rogers's characterization of Cavendish, along with William Harvey, Andrew Marvell, and Milton as "vitalist" political idealists. Vitalism seems to have had most to do with commitment to a political ideal, or and a desire to "forge an ontological connection between physical motion and political action."
However, it would be a mistake to characterize Cavendish's idealism as revolutionary in the progressive sense. Nor, indeed, would it be appropriate to equate the Royalist Cavendish's politics with those of Marvell, secretary to Milton, who served in Cromwell's foreign office. These figures shared a commitment to clarity of social hierarchy while advocating different orders of hierarchy. What is most relevant to the present research is the fact of vitalism as a kind of natural philosophy meant to reconcile the life of the mind, spirit, and imagination with a declared readiness to engage the vicissitudes of the material world. Walker cites Cavendish's desire to "make a world in her own mind and be queen thereof, and none can challenge her right to do so 'since it is in every one's power to do the like.'" The traditional explanation of vitalism as an indeterminate force that "is held to control form and development and to direct the activities of the organism" is also instructive. It is this sensibility that informs the sensibility of utopianism, which is meant to construct an ideal community that has never in human history been realized (= made real).
Rogers points out that Cavendish, like Milton and Marvell, questioned certain tenets of vitalism, which can be interpreted as having the effect of making it a fond wish for an ideal kind of engagement with the world rather than an organizing principle. Vitalism is also a sensibility that must fall before the hard realities of the physical and biochem...