Meanings
- obsoleteuncountableThe ability of a spirit to penetrate and affect matter.
Which Faculty of Spirits, in the Appendix to the Antidote against Atheism is called ὑλοπάθεια, the Hylopathy of Spirits, or a Power of affecting, or being affected by the Matter.
1726, Joseph Glanvill, Sadducismus trimphatus, page 992 more examples
And this affection of a Spirit we will make bold to call, for more compendiousness, by one Greek term ὑλοπάθεια which, that there may be no suspicion of any fraud or affected foolery in words, we will as plainly as we can define thus, A power in a Spirit of offering so near to a corporeal emanation from the Center of life, that it will so perfectly fill the receptivity of Matter into which it has penetrated, that it is very difficult or impossible for any other Spirit to possess the same, and therefore of becoming hereby so firmly and closely united to a Body, as both to actuate and to be acted upon, to affect and be affected thereby.
1662, Henry More, An Antidote Against Atheism, Appendix, Chapter 3The old dualistic notion of mind and matter, so prominent in Cartesianism, will hardly find defenders today. Rejecting this we are driven to some form of hylopathy, otherwise called monism.
1890, Charles S. Peirce, Architecture of Theories
Origin
- Ancient Greekὑλοπάθεια
- Englishhylopathy
From hylo- + -pathy, after the model of Ancient Greek ὑλοπάθεια (hulopátheia), from ὕλη (húlē, “wood, matter”) + πᾰ́σχειν (pắskhein, “to experience, to feel, to suffer”) + -εια (-eia, “-ia: forming nouns”).
More words from Ancient Greek
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
hylopathy. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hylopathy
“hylopathy.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hylopathy. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “hylopathy,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hylopathy.
Source: hylopathy on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.