:''For other uses, see Anima Mundi''
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 originated with Plato and it also features in systems of eastern philosophy in the Brahman-Atman (Hinduism)|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 Theory|Gaia theorists such as James Lovelock.
