"So I can very clearly see us as more than the animals but not as different from them. Not as having acquired a quality that is totally new and different. Only the inanimate and the dead can undergo change so radical that their nature is utterly lost and they become something else…"
We need to agree to differ!
I don't see us as "more" than animals at all. That implies a "we're better than animals" mentality that I don't trust even one little bit. The works of Shakespeare are clearly the result of "a quality that is totally new and different". You could set the million monkeys typing for a million years and I DON'T believe they'd ever come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. There's no mathematical law (of probability) that says they must. Is that quote from the Tempest? Its pretty much the only Shakespeare (King Lear being the other, the combination of madman & his fool is irresistable to me!) I can get away with... "Filled with sights and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not".
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