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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