1579 drawing of the Great Chain of Being from Didacus Valades, Rhetorica Christiana

The Great Chain of Being is a strict hierarchical structure of all matter and life, thought in medieval Christianity to have been decreed by God. The chain starts with God and progresses downward to angels, demons (fallen/renegade angels), stars, moon, kings, princes, nobles, commoners, wild animals, domesticated animals, trees, other plants, precious stones, precious metals and other minerals.^[1]

The Great Chain of Being (Latin: scala naturae, "Ladder of Being") is a concept derived from Plato, Aristotle (in his Historia Animalium), Plotinus and Proclus. Further developed during the Middle Ages, it reached full expression in early modern Neoplatonism.^[2][3]

The Chain of Being is composed of a great number of hierarchical links, from the most basic and foundational elements up through the very highest perfection: God.^[4]

God sits at the top of the chain, and beneath him sit the angels, both existing wholly in spirit form. Earthly flesh is fallible and ever-changing, mutable. Spirit, however, is unchanging and permanent. This sense of permanence is crucial to understanding this conception of reality. It is generally impossible to change the position of an object in the hierarchy. (One exception might be in the realm of alchemy, where alchemists attempted to transmute base elements, such as lead, into higher elements, either silver or, more often, gold—the highest element.)^[1]

In the natural order, earth (rock) is at the bottom of the chain; this element possesses only the attribute of existence. Each link succeeding upward contains the positive attributes of the previous link and adds at least one other. Rocks possess only existence; the next link up is plants which possess life and existence. Animals add motion and appetite as well.^[1]

Man is both mortal flesh, as those below him, and also spirit, as those above. In this dichotomy, the struggle between flesh and spirit becomes a moral one. The way of the spirit is higher, more noble; it brings one closer to God. The desires of the flesh move one away from God. The Christian fall of Lucifer is thought of as especially terrible, as angels are wholly spirit, yet Lucifer defied God (who is the ultimate perfection).^[1]

Each link in the chain might be divided further into its component parts. In medieval secular society, for example, the king is at the top, succeeded by the aristocratic lords and the clergy, and then the peasants below them. Solidifying the king's position at the top of humanity's social order is the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings. The implied permanent state of inequality became a source of popular grievance, and led eventually to political change as in the French Revolution.^[5] In the family, the father is head of the household; below him, his wife; below her, their children.

Milton's Paradise Lost ranked the angels (c.f. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite's ranking of angels), and Christian culture conceives of angels in orders of archangels, seraphim, and cherubim, among others.

Subdivisions are equally apparent among animals. At the top of the animals are wild beasts (such as lions), which were seen as superior as they defied training and domestication. Below them are domestic animals, further sub-divided so that useful animals (such as dogs and horses) are higher than docile creatures (such as sheep). Birds are also sub-divided, with eagles above pigeons, for example. Fish come below birds and are subdivided between actual fish and other sea creatures. Below them come insects, with useful insects such as spiders and bees and attractive creatures such as ladybirds and dragonflies at the top, and unpleasant insects such as flies and beetles at the bottom. At the very bottom of the animal sector are snakes, which are relegated to this position as punishment for the serpent's actions in the Garden of Eden.

Below animals comes the division for plants, which is further subdivided. Trees are at the top, with useful trees such as oaks at the top, and the traditionally demonic yew tree at the bottom. Food-producing plants such as cereals and vegetables are further subdivided.

At the very bottom of the chain are minerals. At the top of this section are metals (further sub-divided, with gold at the top and lead at the bottom), followed by rocks (with granite and marble at the top), soil (subdivided between nutrient-rich soil and low-quality types), sand, grit, dust, and dirt at the very bottom of the entire great chain.

The central concept of the Chain of Being is that everything imaginable fits in somewhere, giving order and meaning to the universe.^[1]

GodEdit

God is at the top of the chain and is also external to creation. God is believed to exist outside the physical limitations of time and space. He possessed the spiritual attributes of reason, love, and imagination, like all spiritual beings, but he alone possessed the divine attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. God serves as the model of authority for the strongest, most virtuous, most excellent type of being within any category.

Angelic beingsEdit

Angels were beings of pure spirit who had no physical bodies of their own. In order to affect the physical world, angels were thought to build temporary bodies for themselves out of particles of earthly elements.^{[page needed]} Medieval and Renaissance theologians believed angels to possess reason, love, imagination, and, like God, to stand outside the physical limitations of time.^{[citation needed]} They possessed sensory awareness unbound by physical organs, and they possessed language. They lacked, however, the divine attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence of God, and they simultaneously lacked the physical passions experienced by humans and animals. Depending upon the author, the class of angels was further subdivided into three, seven, nine, or ten ranks, variously known as triads, orders, or choirs. Each rank had greater power and responsibility than the entities below them. The most common classification is that of St. Thomas Aquinas.^{[6][page needed]}

• Seraphim (seraph is the primate, or superior type of angel)
• Cherubim
• Thrones (Ophanim)
• Dominions
• Virtues
• Powers
• Principalities
• Archangels
• Angels

HumanityEdit

For Medieval and Renaissance thinkers, humans occupied a unique position on the Chain of Being, straddling the world of spiritual beings and the world of physical creation. Humans were thought to possess divine powers such as reason, love, and imagination. Like angels, humans were spiritual beings, but unlike angels, human souls were "knotted" to a physical body. As such, they were subject to passions and physical sensations—pain, hunger, thirst, sexual desire—just like other animals lower on the Chain of Being. They also possessed the powers of reproduction unlike the minerals and rocks lowest on the Chain of Being. Humans had a particularly difficult position, balancing the divine and the animalistic parts of their nature. For instance, an angel is only capable of intellectual sin such as pride (as evidenced by Lucifer's fall from heaven in Christian belief). Humans, however, were capable of both intellectual sin and physical sins such as lust and gluttony if they let their animal appetites overrule their divine reason. Humans also possessed sensory attributes: sight, touch, taste, hearing, and smell. Unlike angels, however, their sensory attributes were limited by physical organs (they could only know things discerned through the five senses). The highest-ranking human being was the king.

AnimalsEdit

Animals, like humans higher on the chain, were animated (capable of independent motion). They possessed physical appetites and sensory attributes, the number depending upon their position within the Chain of Being. They had limited intelligence and awareness of their surroundings. Unlike humans, they were thought to lack spiritual and mental attributes such as immortal souls and the ability to use logic and language. The primate of all animals (the "king of beasts") was variously thought to be either the lion or the elephant. However, each subgroup of animals also had its own primate, an avatar superior in qualities of its type.^{[citation needed]}

• Mammalian primate: lion or elephant
  • Wild animals (large cats, etc.)
  • "Useful" domesticated animals (horse, dog, etc.)
  • "Tame" domesticated animals (housecat, etc.)
• Avian primate: eagle
  • Birds of prey (hawks, owls, etc.)
  • Carrion birds (vultures, crows)
  • "Worm-eating" birds (robin, etc.)
  • "Seed-eating" birds (sparrow, etc.)

Note that avian creatures, linked to the element of air, were considered superior to aquatic creatures linked to the element of water. Air naturally tended to rise and soar above the surface of water, and analogously, aerial creatures were placed higher in the chain.^{[citation needed]}

• Piscine primate: whale
  • Aquatic mammals
  • Sharks
  • Fish of various sizes and attributes

The chart would continue to descend through various reptiles, amphibians, and insects. The higher up the chart one went, the more noble, mobile, strong, and intelligent the creature in Renaissance belief. At the very bottom of the animal section, we find sessile creatures like the oysters, clams, and barnacles. Like the plants below them, these creatures lacked mobility, and were thought to lack various sensory organs such as sight and hearing. However, they were still considered superior to plants because they had tactile and gustatory senses (touch and taste).

PlantsEdit

Plants, like other living creatures, possessed the ability to grow in size and reproduce. However, they lacked mental attributes and possessed no sensory organs. Instead, their gifts included the ability to eat soil, air, and "heat." Plants did have greater tolerances for heat and cold, and immunity to the pain that afflicts most animals. At the very bottom of the botanical hierarchy, fungi and mosses, lacking leaf and blossom, were so limited in form that Renaissance thinkers thought them scarcely above the level of minerals. However, each plant was also thought to be gifted with various edible or medicinal virtues unique to its own type.

• Trees, with the primate: the oak tree
• Shrubs
• Bushes
• "Crops" (such as wheat)
• Herbs
• Ferns
• Weeds
• Mosses
• Fungi

MineralsEdit

Creations of the earth, the lowest of elements, all minerals lacked the plant's basic ability to grow and reproduce. They also lacked mental attributes and sensory organs found in beings higher on the chain. Their unique gifts, however, were typically their unusual solidity and strength. Many minerals, in fact, were thought to possess magical powers, particularly gems. The mineral primate is the diamond.

• Lapidarical primate: diamond
  • Diamonds
  • Rubies
  • Emeralds
  • Sapphires, etc.
• Metallic primate: gold
  • Gold
  • Silver
  • Iron (and steel)
  • Bronze
  • Copper, etc.
• Geological primate: marble
  • Marble
  • Granite
  • Sandstone
  • Limestone, etc.
• Minute particles (gravel, sand, soil, etc.)

From Aristotle to LinnaeusEdit

The basic idea of a ranking of the world's organisms goes back to Aristotle's biology. In his History of Animals, where he ranked animals over plants based on their ability to move and sense, and graded the animals by their reproductive mode and possession of blood (he ranked all invertebrates as "bloodless").^[8]

Aristotle's non-religious concept of higher and lower organisms was taken up by natural philosophers during the Scholastic period to form the basis of the Scala Naturae. The scala allowed for an ordering of beings, thus forming a basis for classification where each kind of mineral, plant and animal could be slotted into place. In medieval times, the great chain was seen as a God-given ordering: God at the top, dirt at the bottom, every grade of creature in its place. Just as rock never turns to flowers and worms never turn to lions, humans never turn to angels. This was not our lot in life. In the Northern Renaissance, the scientific focus shifted to biology.^[9] The threefold division of the chain below humans formed the basis for Linnaeus's Systema Naturæ from 1737, where he divided the physical components of the world into the three familiar kingdoms of minerals, plants and animals.^[10]

Scala naturae in evolutionEdit

The set nature of species, and thus the absoluteness of creatures' places in the great chain, came into question during the 18th century. The dual nature of the chain, divided yet united, had always allowed for seeing creation as essentially one continuous whole, with the potential for overlap between the links.^[1] Radical thinkers like Jean-Baptiste Lamarck saw a progression of life forms from the simplest creatures striving towards complexity and perfection, a schema accepted by zoologists like Henri de Blainville.^[11] The very idea of an ordering of organisms, even if supposedly fixed, laid the basis for the idea of transmutation of species, for example Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.^[12]

The Chain of Being continued to be part of metaphysics in 19th century education, and the concept was well known. The geologist Charles Lyell used it as a metaphor in his 1851 Elements of Geology description of the geological column, where he used the term "missing links" in relation to missing parts of the continuum. The term "missing link" later came to signify transitional fossils, particularly those bridging the gulf between man and beasts.^[13]

The idea of the great chain as well as the derived "missing link" was abandoned in early 20th century science,^[14] as the notion of modern animals representing ancestors of other modern animals was abandoned in biology.^[15] The idea of a certain sequence from "lower" to "higher" however lingers on, as does the idea of progress in biology.^[16]

Allenby and Garreau propose the Catholic Church's narrative of the Great Chain of Being kept the peace for centuries in Europe. The very concept of rebellion simply lay outside the reality within which most people lived for to defy the King was to defy God. King James I himself wrote, "The state of monarchy is the most supreme thing upon earth: for kings are not only God's Lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself they are called Gods."^[12]

The Enlightenment broke this supposed divine plan and fought the last vestiges of feudal hierarchy by creating secular governmental structures that vested power into the hands of ordinary citizens rather than divinely ordained monarchs.^[12]

However, scholars such as Brian Tierney^[17] and Michael Novak^[18] have noted the medieval contribution to democracy and human rights.

The American spiritual writer and philosopher Ken Wilber uses a concept called the "Great Nest of Being" which is similar to the Great Chain of Being, and which he claims to belong to a culture-independent "perennial philosophy" traceable across 3000 years of mystical and esoteric writings. Wilber's system corresponds with other concepts of transpersonal psychology.^[19]

In the 1977 book A Guide for the Perplexed, British philosopher and economist E. F. Schumacher wrote that fundamental gaps exist between the existence of minerals, plants, animals and humans, where each of the four classes of existence is marked by a level of existence not shared by that below. Clearly influenced by the great chain of being, but lacking the angels and God, he called his hierarchy the "levels of being". In the book, he claims that science has generally avoided seriously discussing these discontinuities, because they present such difficulties for strictly materialistic science, and they largely remain mysteries.^[20]

• Arthur O. Lovejoy: The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press (1936)
• E. M. W. Tillyard: The Elizabethan World Picture (1942)

• Dictionary of the History of Ideas – Chain of Being
• The Great Chain of Being reflected in the work of Descartes, Spinoza & Leibniz Peter Suber, Earlham College, Indiana
• The Chain of Being: Tillyard in a Nutshell