The concept of a chain of all creation, firmly in place and indisputable was widely upheld in the Middle Ages and through to Shakespeare.
It maintained that there is a rightful hierarchy which must not be broken and it is the exact opposite of our modern egalitarian view of life.
At the top was God and below Him came the angels. Man was next and was considered less spiritual than those above but with a capacity for reason which kept him above the category below him, animals. Plants followed and at the bottom were minerals.
Within these groups there was also a ladder which makes quite comical reading nowadays when we do not pay attention to the exact position of prawns in a paradigm of life.
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