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The Greek view of nature was essentially pantheistic. The Ionian speculators appear to have presumed without expressly insisting upon its self-regulating power. Aristotle alone emphatically rejected the doctrine of cosmic vitality or sub-conscious tendencies. But Plato accepted and magnified the Oriental tradition; the conception of a 'World-Soul' owed to him its vague splendour and perennial fascination. The function of the Platonic vice-creator (for such the World-Soul must be accounted) was that of moulding brute matter into conformity with the archetypal ideas of the Divine mind; this was not, however, accomplished once for all, but by a progressive spiritualizing of what in its nature was dead and inanimate. The spiritual agent, becoming incorporated with the universal frame, lent to it a semblance of life, an obscure sensitiveness, and even some kind of latent intelligence; and so the anima mundi was shaped into existence, and continued century by century to be the subject and source of imaginings beyond measure wild and fantastic.