First Physical Dissertation on the Bond Connecting Soul and Body

I judge to be sounder than the others: indeed, with that order preserved, so that what COMENIUS spoke more obscurely, ZENO the Heathen had already hinted at more clearly before him, and that pious Jew had expressed most lucidly. Let us therefore allow ourselves to admit this effective pronoia providence as the World Soul, then that, as a work of God directed outward, would certainly not be God himself, nor a substance outside of God, but the most powerful action of the Deity occupied with an external object. Yet action is indeed something real, but not real in the way a substance is; it only hints at the relationship of one essence or substance to another. Wherefore there is no need to posit a bond between this relationship and the substance, such as we are looking for in this place, for it only joins substances that enjoy a reality other than action. But if God were to divest Himself of His providence for created things (to which premise indeed both His wisdom and supreme goodness object), the world soul would be nothing and exist no further.

§. XVIII.

Moreover, if I were to posit that this is the World Soul, I could not deny that a better proportion to immaterial as well as material things resides in it than in others, since the action of pronoia providence, being an act of intellect, can be directed equally toward both by careful thinking. Only let it be observed that we conceive such pronoia providence in God, which the effect is immediately ready to follow; where, however, we must simultaneously think that the Divine intelligence is as far superior to the angelic as it is to the human.