The four great Levels of Being exhibit certain characteristics in a manner which I shall call progressions. Perhaps the most striking progression is the movement from Passivity to Activity. At the lowest level, that of minerals or inanimate matter, there is pure passivity. A stone is wholly passive, a pure object, totally dependent on circumstances and contingent. It can do nothing, organize nothing, utilize nothing. Even radioactive material is passive.
A plant is mainly, but not totally, passive; it is not a pure object; it has a certain, limited ability of adaptation to changing circumstances: it grows toward the light and extends its roots toward moisture and nutrients in the soil. A plant is to a small extent a subject, with its own power of doing, organizing, and utilizing. It can even be said that there is an intimation of active intelligence in plantsnot, of course, as active as that of animals.
At the level of animal, through the appearance of consciousness, there is a striking shift from passivity to activity. The processes of life are speeded up; activity becomes more autonomous, as evidenced by free and often purposeful movement not merely a gradual turning toward light but swift action to obtain food or escape danger. The power of doing, organizing, and utilizing is immeasurably extended; there is evidence of an inner life, of happiness and unhappiness, confidence, fear, expectation, disappointment, and so forth. Any being with an inner life cannot be a mere object: it is a subject itself, capable even of treating other beings as mere objects, as the cat treats the mouse.
At the human level, there is a subject that says I a person: another marked change from passivity to activity, from object to subject. To treat a person as if he or she were a mere object is a perversity, not to say a crime. No matter how weighed down and enslaved by circumstances a person may be, there always exists the possibility of self-assertion and rising above circumstances. Man can achieve a measure of control over his environment and thereby his life, utilizing things around him for his own purposes. There is no definable limit to his possibilities, even though he everywhere encounters practical limitations which he has to recognize and respect.
This progressive movement from passivity to activity, which we observe in the four Levels of Being, is indeed striking, but it is not complete. A large weight of passivity remains even in the most sovereign and autonomous human person; while he is undoubtedly a subject, he remains in many respects an object dependent, contingent, pushed around by circumstances. Aware of this, mankind has always used its imagination, or its intuitive powers, to complete the process, to extrapolate (as we might say today) the observed curve to its completion. Thus was conceived a Being, wholly active, wholly sovereign and autonomous; a Person above all merely human persons, in no way an object, above all circumstances and contingencies, entirely in control of everything: a personal God, the Unmoved Mover. The four Levels of Being are thus seen as pointing to the invisible existence of a Level (or Levels) of Being above the human.
An interesting and instructive aspect of the progression from passivity to activity is the change in the origin of movement. It is clear that at the level of inanimate matter there cannot be movement without a physical cause, and that there is a very close linkage between cause and effect. At the plant level, the causal chain is more complex: physical causes will have physical effects as at the lower levelthe wind will shake the tree whether it is living or deadbut certain physical factors act not simply as physical cause but simultaneously as stimulus. The suns rays cause the plant to turn toward the sun. Its leaning too far in one direction causes the roots on the opposite side to grow stronger.
At the animal level, again, causation of movement becomes still more complex. An animal can be pushed around like a stone; it can also be stimulated like a plant; but there is, in addition, a third causative factor, which comes from inside: certain drives, attractions or compulsions, of a totally nonphysical kind they can be called motives. A dog is motivated, and therefore moved, not merely by physical forces or stimuli impinging upon it from the outside, but also by forces originating in its inner space: recognizing its master, it jumps for joy; recognizing its enemy, it runs in fear.
While at the animal level the motivating cause has to be physically present to be effective, at the level of man there is no such need. The power of self-awareness gives him an additional motivation for movement: will, that is, the power to move and act even when there is no physical compulsion, no physical stimulus, and no motivating force actually present. There is a lot of controversy about will: How free is it? We shall deal with this matter later. In the present context it is merely necessary to recognize that at the human level there exists an additional possibility of the origin of movementone that does not seem to exist at any lower level, namely, movement on the basis of what might be called naked insight. A person may move to another place not because present conditions motivate him to do so, but because he anticipates in his mind certain future developments.
While these additional possibilities namely, the power of foreknowledge and therewith the capacity to anticipate future possibilitiesare no doubt possessed, to some degree, by all human beingsit is evident that they vary greatly from individual to individual, and with most of us are very weak. It is possible to imagine a suprahuman Level of Being where they would exist in perfection. Perfect foreknowledge of the future would therefore be considered a Divine attribute, associated with perfect freedom of movement and perfect freedom from passivity. The progression from physical cause to stimulus to motive to will would then be completed by a perfection of will capable of overriding all the causative forces which operate at the four Levels of Being known to us.