Dictionary

world soul en · NOUN

Etymology

Calque of Latin anima mundi.

Meanings

1. A single, unifying spirit believed by some to animate every living being in the world and to underlie the value of every inanimate thing as well.
   • [H]er vision of Sant'Agnese resembles the beautiful Neoplatonist concept of the world soul as a great boat, in which every individual is a member of the crew who rows it through the cosmos for the space of existence, and then merges back into its fabric. 2001 June 3, Marina Warner, “Books: Where Heaven Touches Down”, in New York Times, retrieved 19 Jul 2011:
   • Like many ungainly or otherwise unattractive Scotchmen, he [Thomas Carlyle] was a seer. By which I do not mean to refer so much to his transcendental rhapsodies about the World-soul or the Nature-garment or the Mysteries and Eternities generally. 1913, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, chapter 1, in The Victorian Age in Literature:
   • You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage; Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove Into the glasses of your eyes 1633, John Donne, The Canonization:
   • NINA: The bodies of all living creatures have dropped to dust, and eternal matter has transformed them into stones and water and clouds; but their spirits have flowed together into one, and that great world-soul am I! 1912, Anton Chekhov, translated by Marian Fell, The Seagull, act 1:
   • Thanks to the morning light, Thanks to the seething sea, To the uplands of New Hampshire, To the green-haired forest free . . . 1847, Ralph Waldo Emerson, The World-Soul:
   • During the long nights on the mountain overshadowing Pasadena, he has done a lot of unorthodox thinking about the human mind, the human soul, the World Soul, Cosmic Consciousness, Cosmos, God. 1940 April 29, “Scientist on Immortality”, in Time:

Forms

Relateds

pantheism · panpsychism

Synonyms

anima mundi

Translations (2)

de Weltseele (single, unifying spirit present in every living being) · pt anima mundi (single, unifying spirit present in every living being)