First Physical Dissertation on the Bond Connecting Soul and Body

For because it is a mere figment, life cannot be attributed to it, and thus the principle of life likewise ceases. On the contrary, the Spirit of the World spiritus mundi is understood as something sensible; the doctrine of which was first delineated by the founder of the Italian School of Philosophers, PYTHAGORAS. For what he determined regarding it, see CICERO, On the Nature of the Gods, Book I, 26, Works, Vol. IV, page 277, A. (Geneva Edition, 1660.) Following Pythagoras, PLATO asserted the same in the Timaeus or περὶ φύσεως concerning nature, a dialogue On Nature or on the Universe, Works, page 528, C. Finally, ZENO of Citium, with the followers of the Stoic Sect, asserted the same, according to LAERTIUS in the life of Zeno, Book VII, 147, 148, page 458, sq. (Amsterdam Edition, 1692.) And it is evident that this opinion of the ancients was likewise received by not a few of the more recent writers.

I judge it to be a sufficiently valid conjecture that the first foundation and occasion for this was their observation that all things in the whole world run and move incessantly, as if distinguished by certain numbers and skillfully arranged, with weights, as it were, appended, just as they observed to happen in the individual species of animate beings. And since they recognized the soul to be the cause of this motion in individual things, they concluded that the world no less requires a certain universal Soul anima quandam universalem, which is the cause of all motions that occur in the world, insofar as those motions are considered not separately, but in relation to this universe. This is hinted at, and