There must have been, and must be a central god in the machine of each animate corpus.

The little soul of the beetle makes the beetle toddle.

The little soul of the _homo sapiens_ sets him on his two feet.

Don't ask me to define the soul.
You might as well ask a bicycle to define the young damsel who so whimsically and so god-like pedals her way along the highroad.

A young lady skeltering off on her bicycle to meet her young man--why, what could the bicycle make of such a mystery, if you explained it till doomsday.