Incluye referencias bibliográficas.

Contenido: The genesis of the idea in greek philosophy: the three principles -- The chain of being and some internal conflicts in medieval thought --The principle of plenitude and the new cosmography -- Plenitude and sufficient reason in Liebniz and Spinoza -- The chain of being in eighteenth-century thougt, and Man's place and role in nature -- The principle of plenitude and eighteenth.century optimism -- The chain of being and some aspects of eighteenth-century biology -- The temporalizing of the chain of being -- Romanticism and the principle of plenitude -- The outcome of the history and its moral.