World soul
World soul
1. An intelligent, animating, indwelling principle of the cosmos, conceived as its organizing or integrating cause, or as the source of its motion; thus posited on the analogy of the hurnan soul and body. Such a doctrine, common among primitive peoples, was taught by Plato, Stoicism, Neo-Platonism, Renaissance Platonism, Bruno, etc.
2. This view has affinities with, and has occasionally developed into, the notion of a World Mind or Absolute Mind as posited in Vedantic and Buddhist idealism, patristic and scholastic Christian theism, objective idealism, and absolute idealism. See Idealism, The Absolute. — W.L.