PANPSICHISMO. - It is the doctrine that attributes a soul to all things, including those of inorganic nature (πᾶν, all, ψυχή, soul), insofar as it is observed that every being possesses a well-defined structure and manifests in its action upon the surrounding world a precise and constant purposiveness.
This conception includes early Greek philosophy (Ionians) and, in part, Stoic philosophy as well, with the theory of the πᾶν τεχνικῶν, the moving principle of all things. P. reappears Renaissance (v.) with the revival of the theory of the anima mundi, which is the act of all things and is in turn differentiated into the individual particular souls of the various things: according to Giordano Bruno, it is the first act of prime matter (cf. De la causa, principio et Uno, ed. G. Gentile, Bari 1925, p. 213). In our own time p. was defended by E. Haeckel (v.), in order to provide a foundation for his thesis of universal evolutionism.