713. This "breathing" or "heartbeat" is probably most well known to people in general in the purely physical area of nutrition. For human beings as well as for animals in the Earth's spheres the struggle to obtain their daily bread or to satisfy their daily bodily hunger is still an almost all-consuming problem. But it cannot be denied that in more and more of the former beings there exist, side by side with their daily hunger for food, many other forms of hunger. Indeed, most normal, civilised human beings certainly still have almost a whole ocean of unsatisfied wishes, longings and aims. But as the rhythm of these wishes or desires stretches over greater lengths of time than the ordinary hunger, which needs to be satisfied preferably within hours or several times a day, the aforementioned wishes or desires are not normally so insistently a question of life or death, and as a result they have to take second place.
      Belonging under the hunger that terrestrial human beings have, apart from the questions of food and existence, are various longings that they could not possibly satisfy in their present lives. Who does not at some point in their life harbour the wish to be a genius in some particular field? Who would not like to hold a much higher position in some way or other than the one they hold at present? And are there not countless human beings who have long ago had to give up all such hopes and have to be content with a rather modest and inconspicuous existence? But what is the purpose of this extraordinary hunger? What is the purpose of all this longing, all this outpouring of energy, if there is no satisfaction? How can it be that Nature, which otherwise demonstrates an immeasurably fine logic in its creative process, here allows millions of human beings to have a hunger, an inner longing, for which it has no satisfaction? To create such an enormous fire in mankind's heart, in its innermost being, with no means whatsoever of quenching it, is a manifestation of the epitome of "hell", indeed, a torture to which there is no parallel, since in all other situations Nature always allows there to be an antidote to counteract every kind of poison.