First Physical Dissertation on the Bond Connecting Soul and Body

§. VIII.

COMENIUS, among the more recent writers, agrees with these in his Synopsis of Physics to be reformed by the Divine Light, where he says the Soul of the World is "the very life infused into the world to work all things in all," Chapter II, page 27, and he strives to prove from Scripture that it is "a certain power of God, diffused through the whole world, sustaining and vivifying all things, and working all things in all," l. c. page 17. Remaining among these more recent authors, I notice that a certain ANONYMOUS writer in his Enchiridion of Restored Physics (Paris, 1623, 8vo), § 5, 6, and 7, affirms that two spirits, as he calls them, taken together represent the World Soul: one is Uncreated, namely the Holy Spirit, brooding over the waters in the first Creation; the other is created, namely the vivifying power of light created in the beginning and cast into the solar body, endowed with secret fecundity; in one word: invisible Fire.

§. IX.

Having sent away the former portion of this spirit, HEINR. NOLLIUS also embraces the latter in his Theory of Hermetic Philosophy, Treatise III on Hermetic Silence, where he says the "spirit of the universe is the same as the fire (*) of the primordial water"

The marginal note reads: "Thus he asks on page 51: What is that body into which the spirit of the universe is copiously transfused? And he answers: It is the most subtle of all bodies, and one most removed from corruption and coarseness, namely the heaven, which, through its stars and luminaries possessing the highest abundance of the location of the universe, sends down the power and essence of the universe into these lower bodies, so that they may persist in vigor, be disposed to life, be impregnated with soul, and be advanced from all imperfection to perfection by certain degrees of change."