If a persom is only concerned with eating, drinking, resting, or sleeping, what is the difference between him and an animal?

If a person is only concerned with achieving his needs, with his financial state, eating, drinking, resting, and sleeping, there really is not much difference between him and an animal.

And what needs to be done for life to be "human life"?

He needs to discover the "soul," the inner perspectives, the source, the value, the mission, the Creator power hidden in everything he does and everything with which he encounters.

The law of things does not apply to the soul of things as it does in material worldly matters. So when he discovers the soul of the world and the soul of things, he gives material life, everyday events, an unlimited and infinite dimension.

In this way, animals are added to it. And so he becomes a person—a person who resembles the Supreme and connects the earth with the Supreme.

(See the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Shichat 19 Kislev 5735)