Instead of thinking of the Root-Being of the world as Spirit, he thinks of it as World-Soul, and postulates a general ensoulment of Nature. Giordano Bruno, upon whom the new Copernican view of Nature forced itself, could grasp Spirit in the world, from which it had been expelled in its old form, in no other manner than as World-Soul. On plunging into Bruno’s writings (especially his deeply thoughtful book: _De Rerum Principiis et Elementis et Causis_) one gets the impression that he thought of things as ensouled, although in varying degree. He has not, in reality, experienced in himself the Spirit, therefore he conceives Spirit after the fashion of the human soul, wherein alone he has encountered it. When he speaks of Spirit, he conceives of it in the following way: “The universal reason is the inmost, most effective and most special capacity, and a potential part of the World-Soul; it is something one and identical, which fills the All, illuminates the universe and instructs Nature how to bring forth her species as they ought to be.” In these sentences Spirit, it is true, is not described as a “gaseous vertebrate,” but it is described as a being that is like to the human soul. “Let now a thing be as small and tiny as you please, it yet has within it a portion of spiritual substance, which, when it finds a substratum adapted thereto, reaches out to become a plant, an animal, and organises itself to any body you choose that is ordinarily called ensouled. For Spirit is to be found in all things, and there does not exist even the tiniest little body which does not embrace in itself such a share thereof as causes it to come to life.”