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Elaboration 52

All living nature is roughly dividable into three separate functions qua ideation. The three are wholly integrated i.e. one cannot have a more advanced one (later in phylogenesis), without also having the foregoing ones. The differences are in the form of freedoms. Freedoms or capacities for choice. Plants, the lowest form, have one degree of freedom, distinguishing them from the zero-degree inanimate. The inanimate has no choice whatever, is fully automatic. Animals, have an extra degree 'added' to their first one, as improvement. It is the automatic-looking inquisitiveness that is in reality an extra freedom of choice. Man too, has a (third) degree added to his vegetative and animal ideational function. He has a freedom to have ideas at his disposal. His functioning therefore has of necessity the inquisitiveness that is possible by the grace of this third degree, i.e. what the old philosophers (philosophy meaning 'searching for truth in our environment') showed, a search for wisdom.

Ven 2007-09-11