Human ability (extra)

Man differs from the lower animals because he preservers his past experience.
What happened in the past is lived again in memory.
About what goes on today hangs a cloud of thoughts concerning similar things undergone in bygone days.
With other animals, an experience perishes as it happens, and each new doing or suffering srands alone.
 But man lives in a world where each occurrence is charged with echoes and reminiscence of what has gone before, where each event is a reminder of other things. Hence he lives not, like the beasts of the field, in a world or merely physical things, but in a world of signs and symbols.
 A flame is not merely something which warms or burns, but is a symbol of the enduring life of the household, of the abiding source of cheer, nourishment and shelter to which man returns from his casual wanderings.
In other words, unlike the lower animals, man is able to relate the present with the past in terms of the mental process that codes and decodes what he has experienced.