1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Panpsychism

PANPSYCHISM (Gr. πᾶν, all; ψυχή, soul), a philosophical term applied to any theory of nature which recognizes the existence of a psychical element throughout the objective world. In such theories not only animals and plants but even the smallest particles of matter are regarded as having some rudimentary kind of sensation or “soul,” which plays the same part in relation to their objective activities or modifications as the soul does in the case of human beings. Such theories are the modern scientific or semi-scientific counterparts of the primitive animism of savage races, and may be compared with the hylozoism of the Greek physicists. In modern times the chief exponents of panpsychist views are Thomas Carlyle, Fechner and Paulsen: a similar idea lay at the root of the physical theories of the Stoics.