People since ancient times believed that the world surrounding them same live, as well as they are. Pagans called such animation divine force, Christians considered obscurantism, and philosophers constructed on it the whole doctrine under the name "gilozoizm".
It is considered that the first Greeks thought of essence of matter. In their language the concept "gilozoizm" meaning literally hyle was born there is a substance, matter and zoe — life. To be fair it is worth noticing that they did not joint these two roots in a uniform concept, as the philosophical term the gilozoizm received existence only in the 17th century. Gilozoista see a certain presence of soul at all surrounding matter, so do not divide it into animated and inanimate Even a stone, according to them, feels or gives feeling.
Some of currents of a gilozoizm can call pantheism which adherent were Zenona, Hrisipp and other racks. They considered that divine soul penetrates all matter, turning the world into a uniform live body. Space it is rational also expediently organized living being.
It is obvious that such doctrine could not but revive in Renaissance. Certainly, the person, the person who is in close connection with the nature, in harmony with it became the center of such spiritualized space. Spiritual it was not opposed material now, and, on the contrary, these natural aspects of life supplemented each other. There was also a doctrine about world soul. For example, Giordano Bruno claimed that all existing worlds of the Universe are inhabited, the Universe is a big reasonable organism. "There is no thing which is not possessing soul or, at least, the vital beginning" - he wrote in the treatise "About the Nature, the Beginning and Uniform" God says in the nature — Spinoza, and Denis Diderot, based on Ancient Greek treatises considered, proved that all matter has the property similar to feeling. It was talked, in particular that the feeling is an unconditional property only of advanced organic matter. Today this philosophical doctrine endures the next splash in interest in it.