SOURCE: "Astrology to 1650," in A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Vol. VII, Columbia University Press, 1958, pp. 89-152.

Rudolf Steiner discusses Giordano Bruno's views on the "world-soul":

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 … 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...