In the Timaeus, Plato describes the cosmos as a living creature with a soul, fashioned by the demiurge. For Plotinus the world soul is an aspect of Soul, the third hypostasis. The idea recurs in the Stoics, the Renaissance Platonists and the German Romantics.
World soul
The soul of the cosmos, which animates and orders the universe as a living whole.
Also: anima mundi