The "male" and "female state" can bring the sympathetic faculties to swing towards only the opposite sex of the individual. Because of this sexual effect or state, the being here can feel sympathy for the spouse by virtue of this being a requirement for sexual satisfaction. And the greater the enjoyment or satisfaction that the spouse can give to the being, the more it becomes necessary for the previously mentioned being to possess the right of ownership over this sexual partner; indeed, it can even in the worst case be perceived as a vital necessity. But to demand and love something because it feels like a vital necessity for one's own bodily and mental well-being, is not so much a love for or a worship of this something as it is in fact a worship of itself. One takes good and meticulous care of this something because one's happiness in life stands and falls by that something, which in this case means therefore one's sexual partner. But this care for and possible caressing of a being, which means one's happiness in life, is not any absolute love; it is only self-preservation. There, where two beings thus have come to mutually constitute the absolute prerequisite for each other's happiness in life, the highest state of paradise within the "animal kingdom" is felt. It is the mission of the "male" and "female" principle to create this mutual situation and, in the emerging sense of intoxicating bliss from this, to propagate life from spiritual to physical existence. This sexual state has no other mission than this. Neighbourly love or the Christmas Gospel's "peace" and "good will" for the terrestrial human beings could not possibly be released through this sexual structure. It is the mission of the Christmas Gospel to lead the terrestrial human beings from a physical to a spiritual existence, from selfishness to selflessness, from "cultivation of matter" to "cultivation of life", which in its entirety can be done only in the form of the release of the same love towards anyone whatsoever as that which one feels for oneself. That the terrestrial human beings therefore find themselves at an extraordinarily profound mental crossroads between the true "animal" and the true "human" has thus here become apparent. It has also become evident that it is not intended that the "Christ-child" in the form of the terrestrial human being should be only a "male" or "female" being. For if this were precisely the purpose, with what would it raise itself up over the "animal"? Is it not just its release from its specific male state that the man becomes an artist, becomes a genius? And is it not in the same way through the release from its specific "female state" that the woman also becomes an artist or genius? Where is real art found, a real genius, that can be demonstrated only by being a specific "male" manifestation or a specific "female" manifestation beyond those manifestations that belong to the "animal" state of mating or propagation, such as nest-building, digging a cave, hunting or other forms of gathering food or releasing the drive for self-preservation? Are not all these manifestations specifically animal? And is it not the reason why they came to constitute the "bread" that could be obtained through only the "sweat of Adam's brow"? Are they not the same manifestations that today fall under both the intellectual and the unintellectual paid work, which also means to say a job a being must perform in order to maintain its existence and on which basis it must also to a corresponding degree be identical to a slave in this area? But when it is only a job that can be carried out solely for maintaining the existence of the worker himself, his spouse and offspring, there is in principle no difference between this work and the work the animal must do in order to maintain its existence, as well as itself, its spouse and offspring. And it is not work dictated by the drive for self-preservation that raises the individual above the animal or causes the terrestrial human being to be a "Christ-child" or a prospective "human being", although it is still a "mammal".