among divines and naturalists, denotes the soul, or principle of life, in animals. See Soul.

among chemists, denotes the volatile or spirituous parts of bodies.

ANIMA Hepatis, is a name by which some call sal martis or salt of iron, on account of its supposed efficacy in diseases of the liver.

ANIMA Mundi, a certain pure ethereal substance or spirit, diffused, according to many of the ancient philosophers, through the mafs of the world, informing, actuating, and uniting the divers parts thereof into one great, perfect, organic, and vital body or animal. Plato treats at large of the ἀνάρχη τῆς κόσμου, in his Timaeus; and is even supposed to be the author of the dogma; yet are interpreters much at a loss about his meaning. Aristotle, however, taking it in the common and obvious sense, strenuously opposes it. The modern Platonists explain their master's anima mundi by a certain universal ethereal spirit, which in the heavens exists perfectly pure, as retaining its proper nature; but on earth pervading elementary bodies, and intimately mixing with all the minute atoms thereof, it assumes somewhat of their nature, and becomes of a peculiar kind.—So the poet:

Spiritus They add, that this anima mundi, which more immediately resides in the celestial regions as its proper seat, moves and governs the heavens in such manner, as that the heavens themselves first received their existence from the fecundity of the same spirit; for that this anima, being the primary source of life, every where breathed a spirit like itself, by virtue whereof various kinds of things were framed conformable to the divine ideas.