Anima mundi (spirit)

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Anima mundi (Latin) is the world soul, a pure ethereal spirit, which was proclaimed by some ancient philosophers to be diffused throughout all nature. It was thought to animate all matter in the same sense in which the soul was thought to animate the human.

The idea is said to have originated with Plato but the concept has been discovered to be of more ancient origin. It prevailed in systems of eastern philosophy in the Brahman-Atman of Hinduism. Subsequently the Stoics believed it to be the only vital force in the universe.

Similar concepts were held by hermetic philosophers like Paracelsus, and by Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz and later by Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854).

It has been elaborated since the 1960s by Gaia theorists such as James Lovelock.

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Last updated on Wednesday January 09, 2008 at 08:39:35 PST (GMT -0800)
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