Georg Ernest Stahl (1660-1734) German chemist and doctor. He laid the foundations of his animistic doctrine in his main work, Theoria medica vera (1707). According to Stahl, the soul represented the principle of all vital phenomena: an organism was the visible manifestation of a soul, which presided over the function of that organism and ensured all its vital processes were bent on fulfilling the same purpose. Stahl also noted that all organisms possess structure and that an organisms constituent mechanisms are in constant movement.