Started from the bottom (of material qualities), now we here (in ontologically confused states.)
// Our task is to look at the world and see it whole. We see what our ancestors have always seen: a great Chain of Being which seems to divide naturally into four sections, four "kingdoms," as they used to be called: mineral, plant, animal, and human. This "was, in fact, until not much more than a century ago, probably the most widely familiar conception of the general scheme of things, of the constitutive pattern of the universe. " The Chain of Being can be seen as extending downward from the Highest to the lowest, or it can be seen as extending upward from the lowest to the Highest. The ancient view begins with the Divine and sees the downward Chain of Being as moving an ever-increasing distance from the Center, with a progressive loss of qualities. The modern view, largely influenced by the doctrine of evolution, tends to start with inanimate matter and to consider man the last link of the chain, as having evolved the widest range of useful qualities. For our purposes here, the direction of looking-upward or downward-is unimportant, and, in line with modern habits of thought, we shall start at the lowest level, the mineral kingdom, and consider the successive gain of qualities or powers as we move to the higher levels. //
E.F. Schumacher, A Guide for the Perplexed
