What sets human beings apart from animals?
Sai Baba: Discrimination … sets [human beings] apart from the rest of the animals. The divine power is present everywhere in creation. Only man has the capacity to recognise this power. No other living being than man has been endowed with intelligence and [a] discriminative faculty, heightened to this degree, in order to enable it to visualise the Atma. This is the reason why man is acclaimed as the crown of creation, and why the Sasthras proclaim that the chance of being born as man is a very rare piece of good fortune. Man has the qualifications needed to seek the cause of Creation; he has in him the urge and the capacity. Man alone can rise through effort to higher stages of spiritual evolution. No other animal can do so. Animal tamers of the circus can train a tiger to perform various tricks, but they cannot change his nature. They cannot make it live on grass and completely deprive it of meat. But man is different. His nature can be changed by means of his own disciplined effort
