1. In all things there must be order, for the sake of decorum and for their control. The Latin name of the world itself evokes the adornment and the grace that proceed from its admirable disposition; and in Greek it is called ϰóσμος because of its beautiful order and arrangement. For the perfect Workman, says Plato, ‘brought it from disorder to order’, which Cicero renders thus: ‘he constituted order out of disorder’.

2. Inanimate creatures are all set in their places there, according to their high or low degrees of perfection; their times and seasons are certain, their properties regulated, their effects assured. As for animate creatures, the celestial intelligences have their hierarchical orders which are immutable. In the case of men, who are ordained by God to command other animate creatures in this sublunary world, their order may be changeable and subject to vicissitude. This is because of the freedom and peculiar liberty which God has given them for good and evil. Nevertheless, they too cannot subsist without order.

3. For we cannot live together in a condition of equality, but of necessity it must be that some command and others obey. Those who command have several orders or degrees: sovereign lords command all those in their state, addressing their commandment to the great, the great to the intermediate, the intermediate to the minor, and the minor to the people.