1. In Platonic philosophical myth (Timaeus) a force that plays an intermediary role between the Forms and the material world. It is the principle of order and of life from which the Demiurge derives individual human souls.
2. In Plotinus the intermediary between the Nous and matter, creating in the latter according to the ideas contemplated in the Nous.
3. In speculative Christianity, the Holy Spirit.
4. In Renaissance philosophy, for example in Campanella, the first instrument of Sophia, Divine Wisdom, through which everything is made. In Cornenius the spiritus mundi which is life infused into the world so that all things may be moved sympathetically thereby.
5. In other philosophers, the spirit of nature (Herder, H More); the ether or something closely related to it (Newton); the arché or quintessence (Paracelsus, van Helmont); the natura naturans (Spinoza); etc.
6. In part, de Chardin's interpretation of Vernadsky's noosphere.