the hierarchical gradation of the various orders of creatures. "For," says St. Thomas (Contra gentiles, III, 81), "of those things that are wholly without cognition, one influences another accordingly as it is more powerful in action; for they have no share in divine Providence, but only in execution." . . . "Brute animals, although destitute of intellect, are yet in the order of Providence preferred to plants and other creatures lacking cognition, because they have some cognition. . . . But because man has intellect and sense and bodily power, these are mutually ordered, according to the disposition of divine Providence, to a likeness of the order that prevails in the universe. For his bodily power is subject to sense and intellect, as executing their bidding; and sensitive power is subject to intellective and held under its dominion. . . . Similarly, order exists among men themselves; for those who are intellectually preëminent are naturally in command; and those who are deficient in this respect, but robust of body, seem to be destined by nature to serve. . . . Now, just as in the works of an individual man, inordination results from the intellect's following of sensual power, and sensual power by bodily indisposition is drawn after the motion of the body . . . so in the government of men inordination arises not when by his greatness of intellect any one commands, but when by bodily force he usurps dominion, or because of sensual affection is preferred to power." And how admirably our Doctor explains the unity in variety in which consists the beauty of creation! "Because every created substance must necessarily fall short of the perfection of divine goodness, it was necessary for the more perfect communication of divine goodness to creatures, that what could not be adequately represented by any one creature should be manifested more perfectly by different entities diversely; for man also, when he finds that the concept of his mind cannot be adequately represented by one word, multiplies words diversely to express in divers ways the conception of his mind. In this essentially may we place the excellence of divine perfection, that perfect goodness, which in God exists solely and simply,
