Ecclesiastes 3:19

Ecclesiastes teaches us from this not to attend to our physical needs but to our spiritual existence.

Why did he write, "What advantage does man have over beast?" Perceive now what had happened. Understand now the scorn toward us when he saw that humanity had recognized gods other than the Lord God alone and had not obeyed this utterance, "No foreign god shall be in your midst, nor shall you worship a strange god." Then, when he saw humanity had acted wickedly by [doing] what is contrary to nature, with abominable deeds, with pernicious deeds that no one should be able to mention [and] to which no one should be able to listen, he said this. For if a person does not recognize his value, not only is he reckoned with the beast but the beast is more esteemed than he, when it is said, "An ox knows its owner, and the ass its master's crib."

In describing the pleasures of the flesh, he puts all cares out of his mind and states that it is good to eat and drink. Later, he finds fault with this view from the standpoint of reason and says it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting. Likewise, from purely carnal considerations he advises a young man to find his pleasure in his youth, and later, modifying this statement, he blames youth and its pleasures as fleeting. So, too, when he speaks from the minds of the infirm, our Preacher voices an opinion based on suspicion. "For the lot of man and of beast," he says, "is one lot; the one dies as well as the other. Both have the same life breath, and man has no advantage over the beast." Later, however, he presents conclusions drawn from reason and says, "What has the wise man more than the fool? and what the poor man, but to go where there is life?" So, after he says, "Man has no advantage over the beast," he again specifies that the wise person has an advantage not only over the beast but also over the foolish person, namely, his ability to go "where there is life."