world soul

plural world souls · alternative world-soul · alternative World Soul · alternative World-Soul · alternative world's soul

1. human sciencesA 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.

   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

   5 more examples

   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

   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

   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

   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

   [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

   Synonyms: anima mundi

plural World Souls

1. alternativeAlternative form of world soul.