world soul
English edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
Calque of Latin anima mundi.
Noun edit
world soul (plural world souls)
- (religion, philosophy) 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.
- 1633, John Donne, The Canonization:
- 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
- 1847, Ralph Waldo Emerson, The World-Soul:
- Thanks to the morning light,
Thanks to the seething sea,
To the uplands of New Hampshire,
To the green-haired forest free . . .
- 1912, Anton Chekhov, translated by Marian Fell, The Seagull, act 1:
- 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!
- 1913, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, chapter 1, in The Victorian Age in Literature:
- 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.
- 1940 April 29, “Scientist on Immortality”, in Time:
- 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.
- 2001 June 3, Marina Warner, “Books: Where Heaven Touches Down”, in New York Times, retrieved 19 July 2011:
- [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.
Synonyms edit
Translations edit
single, unifying spirit present in every living being
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See also edit
References edit
- “world soul”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.