Download or read book The Great Chain of Being written by Arthur O. Lovejoy and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1936 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From later antiquity to the close of the 18th century, most educated men accepted without question a traditional view of the plan and structure of the world. In this volume, Lovejoy copiously illustrates the influence of this conception, and of the ideas out of which it was compounded, upon the imagination and feelings as expressed in literature.