animal spirits

Noun

animal spirits pl (plural only)

1. (historical, plural, plural-only) The theorized ‘spirits’ or physiological principles which allowed for sensation and voluntary movement.
   • This is likewiſe evident in ſuch as walke in the night in their ſleep, and doe ſtrange feats: theſe vapours moue the Phantaſie, the Phantaſie the Appetite, which mouing the animall ſpirits, cauſeth the body to walke vp and downe, as if they were awake.1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], “Of the force of Imagination”, in The Anatomy of Melancholy, […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC...
   • His Brains will be found situated at the Head of the Os Pubis: His Animal Spirits acting more vigorously in that Part, than in the Upper Region.1723, Charles Walker, Memoirs of Sally Salisbury, section VI
2. (plural, plural-only) Liveliness, vivacity, a happy tendency to action.
   • She had high animal spirits, and a sort of natural self-consequence, which the attention of the officers, to whom her uncle's good dinners, and her own easy manners recommended her, had increased into assurance.1813, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Plain Label, published 1975, page 63
   • Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as a result of animal spirits — of a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative...1936, John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, page 161
3. (plural, plural-only) After Keynes (citation 1936, above), the emotional and intuitive factors that drive business decisions whether to make investment gambles.
   • This flaw exists because the financial system necessary for capitalist vitality and vigor — which translates entrepreneurial animal spirits into effective demand for investment — contains the potential for runaway expansion, powered by an investment boom.1975, Hyman P. Minsky, John Maynard Keynes, page 11
   • The existence of animal spirits does not imply that "irrational psychology" is the controlling factor in business and economics.2005, Roger S. Frantz, Two minds: intuition and analysis in the history of economic thought, page 91