PLASTIC NATURE, StC.
The doctrine of the soul of the world, makes a con spicuous figure in most of the ancient systems of philo sophy, under various modifications. It has sometimes been ascribed to Plato, as its original inventor ; but it is certainly of a much higher antiquity: It seems to have been a tenet in the Egyptian philosophy ; but was more clearly taught in the systems of the Indian gyinnoso phists, from which the philosophy of Egypt was proba bly in 'a great measure derived. The Indian sages re presented the universe as the garment of God ; and spoke of the Deity as the intellectual principle by which all things were animated, as by a soul. They represent ed the human soul as a particle or emanation of that in tellectual fire, by which they believed the universe to be animated; and they taught, that after death, or, at least, after being purified by various transmigrations, the soul would be again united to its original fountain, the soul of the world. (Cicero de Di-oin.) Thales, and his immediate successors in the Ionic school, taught a doctrine, concerning the soul of the world, not much unlike that of the Indian sages. Pytha goras too, as Cicero expressly assures us, believed the first mover to be a soul pervading all nature, and of which every human soul is a portion. (De Nat. Deor. 1. i. c. 12.) A similar system was taught respecting this subject, in the schools of the ancient Peripatetics and Stoics.
The doctrine of Plato, concerning the soul of the world, though in some respects similar, is greatly more sublime. In all the systems already mentioned, the soul of the world is considered as a self-existent intel lectual principle, eternally united with eternal matters, and as constituting the first mover, or supreme active cause, in the universe. In the system of Plato, eternity
is denied to the soul of the world, which is represented as owing its origin to the great independent First Cause, or Divinity ; being compounded of two eternal princi ples in nature, the invisible or divine, an the material or corporeal ; from the first it derives the superior part of its nature ; from the latter, its inferior part. (Tim.c.) In the language of Plato, the universe being animated by a soul, which proceeds from God ; and several parts of nature, particularly the heavenly bodies, are God's. (Tim.v.) And it is from this soul of the world, that Plato conceives the human soul to have been derived, by emanation.
This doctrine of a soul of the world, so generally prevalent in the ancient systems of philosophy, is thus expressed by the poet Manilius. (lib. ii.) It has been rejected by most modern philosophers, as an incongruous combination of the intellectual and material principles, and as confounding togeth. r the workmen and the work, the Creator and the created. The learned and ingenious Cudworth, however, revived, and strenuously defended this tenet of the ancient phi losophy, nearly as taught in the Platonic school, suusti tuting, instead of the term, soul of the world, the name of plastic nature. His opinions concerning this subject, and the arguments by which he supports them, may be seen in the third chapter of the first book of his " Intel lectual System," a work of uncommon erudition and re search in every thing that relates to the ancient philoso phical systems. (in)