E. M. W. Tillyard: The Elizabethan World Picture

The Chain of Being

The Elizabethans pictured the universal order under three main forms: a chain, a series of corresponding planes, and a dance. I shall deal with each picture in turn. [...]

The chain stretched from the foot of God’s throne to the meanest of inanimate[1] objects. Every speck[2] of creation was a link in the chain, and every link except those at the two extremities was simultaneously bigger and smaller than another: there could be no gap. The precise magnitude of the chain raised metaphysical difficulties, but the safest opinion made it short of infinity though of a finitude quite outside man’s imagination.

 First there is mere existence, the inanimate class: the elements, liquids, and metals. But in spite of this common lack of life there is vast difference of virtue; water is nobler than earth, the ruby than the topaz, gold than brass: the links in the chain are there. Next there is existence and life, the vegetative class, where again the oak is nobler than the bramble[3]. Next there is existence, life and feeling, the sensitive class. In it there are three grades. First the creatures having touch, but not hearing, memory or movement. Such are shellfish and parasites on the base of trees. Then there are animals having touch, memory and movement, but not hearing, for instance ants. And finally there are the higher animals, horses and dogs etc., that have all these faculties. The three classes lead up to man, who has not only existence, life and feeling, but understanding: he sums up in himself the total faculties[4] of earthly phenomena. (For this reason he was called the little world or microcosm.) But as there had been an inanimate class, so to balance it there must be a purely rational or spiritual. These are the angels, linked to man by community of the understanding, but freed from simultaneous attachment to the lower faculties.

There are vast numbers of angels and they are as precisely ordered along the chain of being as the elements or the metals. Now, although the creatures are assigned their precise place in the chain of being, there is at the same time the possibility of a change. The chain is also a ladder. The elements are alimental[5]. There is a progression in the way the elements nourish plants, the fruits of plants beasts, and the flesh of beasts men. And this is all one with the tendency of man upwards towards God. The chain of being is educative both in the marvels[6] of its static self and in its implications[7] of ascent.

The Corresponding Planes[8]

The world picture so far dealt with was vertical: that of a chain beginning on high with the noblest and descending to the meanest things of creation. But the second picture of the same world was largely horizontal. It consisted of a number of planes, arranged one below another in order of dignity but connected by an immense net of correspondences. [...] The different planes were the divine and angelic, the universe or macrocosm, the commonwealth or body politic, man or the microcosm, and the lower creation. [...]

This resolution to find correspondences everywhere was a large part of the great medieval striving after unity, and it survived in its main outlines past the age of Elizabeth. [...]

Just as in the chain of being the position of man was the most interesting of all, so among the correspondences that between man and the cosmos was the most famous and the most exciting. [...]

Commonest of all correspondences in poetry is that between the storms and earthquakes of the great world and the stormy passions of man. And though here we are often in the realm of metaphor, it is still metaphor strengthened by literal belief. [...] Morally the correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm, if taken seriously, must be impressive. If the heavens are fulfilling punctually their vast and complicated wheelings, man must feel it shameful to allow the workings of his own little world to degenerate.

The Cosmic Dance

Ever since the early Greek philosophers creation had been figured as an act of music, and the notion[9] appealed[10] powerfully to the poetically of the mystically minded. [...] But there was the further notion that the created universe was itself in a state of music, that it was one perpetual dance.

The idea of creation as a dance implies “degree”, but degree in motion. The static battalions of the earthly, celestial, and divine hierarchies are sped[11] on a varied but controlled peregrination[12] to the accompaniment of music. The path of each is different, yet all the paths together make up a perfect whole. [...] Like the static notion of degree, the dance to music is repeated on the different levels of existence. The angels or saints in their bands dance to the music of heaven. [...] The blessed in heaven resemble the planetary spheres in the variety of their motions and in the music to which those motions are set. [...] On the earth natural things, although they shared in the effects of the Fall, are pictured as duplicating the planetary dance.

The change of meaning in the word element has prevented a modern from understanding the thoroughness with which medieval and modern science are opposed. An element is thought of as an ultimate constituent part, a final result after analysis has done its work, and the four elements are regarded as the rudimentary gropings[1] after an atomic theory instead of something quite opposed. Now just as God, source of all existence, to the medieval mind was first of all one and after was divided in this way or that; so matter was one, and the elements, far from being ultimate and different indivisibles, were primarily certain qualities attributable to all matter. They were founded on the notions of hot and cold, dry and moist, and earth as an element was the name for the cold and dry qualities of matter in combination. In other words, the elements were thought of through their effects. [...] The elements therefore, as well as being effects, were at least aspects of the common substance, and as such they had their almost ceremonial places in the great world order.

Heaviest and lowest was the cold and dry element, the earth. Its natural place was the centre of the universe, of which it was the dregs[2]. Outside earth was the region of cold and moist, the water. That solid land should thrust itself above the waters was merely one of the many instances of an extrinsic cause making a thing depart from its own intrinsic nature. Outside water was the region of hot and moist, the air. Air, though nobler than water, was not to be compared with the ether for purity. Just as angels took their shapes from the ether, so the devils took theirs from the air, their peculiar region. Noblest of all is fire, which next below the sphere of the moon enclosed the globe of air that girded water and earth. It was hot and dry, rarefied[3], invisible to human sight, and was the fitting transition to the eternal realms[4] of the planets. In this region meteors and other transient[5] fires were generated. These, as transient, could not come from the eternal region of the stars.

But though the elements were arranged in this hierarchy, in their own chain of being, analogous to that of the living creatures, they were in actuality mixed in infinitely varied proportion and they were at perpetual war with each other. For instance, fire and water are opposed, but God in his wisdom kept them from mutual destruction by putting the element of air between them, which, having one quality of both the others, acted as a transition and kept the peace. [...]

Man’s physical life begins with food, and food is made of the four elements. Food passes through the stomach to the liver, which is lord of the lowest of the three parts of the body. The liver converts the food it receives into four liquid substances, the humours, which are to the human body what the elements are to the common matter of the earth. Each humour has its own counterpart among the elements. The correspondence is best set out in a table.

                ELEMENT                                      HUMOUR                                      COMMON QUALITY

                Earth                                         Melancholy                                      Cold and dry

                Water                                        Phlegm                                            Cold and moist

                Air                                             Blood                                              Hot and moist

                Fire                                            Choler                                             Hot and dry

In normal operation all the humours together are carried by the veins from the liver to the heart, a proper mixture of the humours being necessary to bodily growth and functioning as that of the elements to creation of permanent substances. The four humours created in the liver are the life-giving moisture of the body. [...] But it usually happened that one humour was, even if a little, prominent, giving a man his distinct mark. On this rigidly physical theory of character the Elizabethans naturally felt themselves very close to the rest of nature and in particular very susceptible to the action of the stars.

E. M. W. Tillyard: The Elizabethan World Picture, London 1943.