832. At this point some readers will surely raise a protest and claim that the above pointing out of the masculine and feminine characteristics cannot be totally correct, since in everyday life one comes across a great many examples of beings of the same sex being very devoted to each other. Furthermore, we can see that many women can possess in themselves strong masculine faculties, manage large corporations, have many beings submit to their will, and be admirers more of their own sex than the opposite sex. In the same way we see many men who do not want independence and power and who have no noticeably strong will, but are actually happy to be subordinate to another man or other men and who, like the aforementioned masculine women, admire and idolise representatives of their own sex. And to this the answer must be that this is perfectly true, but it does not in any way invalidate the classification of the aforementioned life substances as, by nature, specifically "masculine" and "feminine", but it rather constitutes irrefutable proof that they are no longer to such a high degree typical men and women as they were on earlier evolutionary steps. The appearance of men and women as specific beings representing respectively "masculinity" and "femininity" is therefore degenerating or in decline. This degeneration has even advanced or developed so far that among present-day terrestrial mankind that there are no longer one hundred per cent "male beings" and one hundred per cent "female beings". Such beings died out long ago. The condition of such beings will now be considered merely a part of the terrestrial human being's history, in reality merely a description of its primordial condition. But is it not precisely this declining form of specifically "male" beings and specifically "female" beings that gives rise to the very remarkable mental manifestation that today constitutes the appearance of terrestrial mankind on Earth? Is not this appearance due precisely to the gradual blurring of such specifically "male and female beings"? Where is the modern, mature man who is exclusively a "male animal", a kind of bull, stallion or boar, which in this connection means a being who has no other sphere of interest whatsoever other than to possess beings of the opposite sex? And where is the modern, mature woman who has exclusively the same sphere of interest and is thus entirely a "female animal", like a cow, a mare or a sow? Of course, this is not to be disparaging about the sphere of interest that shows itself in the desire to possess individuals of the opposite sex; on the contrary, this sphere of interest is in principle inordinately divine and constitutes for the time being the condition for the survival of the species. We have made these drastic comparisons here merely in order to be able to show better the extent to which modern human beings are really already far above the mentality that is exclusively that of the "animal". What is it that creates the great artist, whether male or female, or that creates everything that issues forth from beings as a manifestation of genius and that allows them to appear as a genius? And what is it that creates the urge in all other terrestrial human beings to be the same? Can it possibly be to a particular extent that aspect of life in which one finds satisfaction solely in raising children? Is it not precisely this "something", this sphere of interest outside of marriage, that human beings rather than animals possess and that determines their appearance as human beings? Is not this sphere of interest the expression of a completely new kind of desire, a desire that it has to be said belongs to a completely different form of hunger than that which finds expression in the "one-poled" being's desire to possess a being of the opposite sex? Who does not feel admiration for great creations or works of art? Who does not admire the producers of such creations? And are there not therefore a great many other phenomena that, to a very great extent, awaken the terrestrial human being's admiration, without in any way whatsoever being an expression or representation of that being's conscious adoration of a being of the opposite sex?