The Govinda Bhasya of Baladeva Vidyabhusana (#01): athāto brahma-jijñāsā

The whole purpose of the material creation is to give a chance to the conditioned souls to revive their eternal nature. The Puranas explain that there are 8,400,000 forms of life in this universe, distributed amongst aquatics, plants, insects, lower animals, humans, and also higher beings, all the way up to Brahma. Before attaining the human form, the soul has to pass through an extremely long evolutionary process, going through the millions of different forms of plants and animals. In all these different species there is some degree of intelligence and something to be learned, but only human beings have the higher intelligence necessary to understand philosophical topics. In all the lower species of life, the soul is fully immersed in the assumption that one is the body, and thus works tirelessly just to maintain it. Only in the human form of life, there is the possibility of understanding our real nature as spiritual sparks transcendental to the body, starting the process of brahma-jijñāsā (inquiry into Brahman).