1667. At the beginning of mankind's epoch of light, that is to say the stage that to a great extent is sustained today by the most recent major world religions, the beings thus hate darkness or "evil", and combat it with great antipathy, anger and war. The religious sects, religions and societies are thus at loggerheads and show considerable intolerance towards one another. They each make great claims to possessing the right light, while all the religious parties that think differently are perceived as beings of darkness, as "heathens", and their view of the light as "heathendom". The experience of the new epoch of light is thus in fact not so advanced in its evolution as to avoid becoming a new object for people's mutual intolerance or indignation, anger or animal nature. But how could beings discard traditions that are millions of years old merely because they begin to be trained in new precepts? And what then is the aim of these precepts? Is it not to develop one's ability to combat one's own anger, hot temper, intolerance and selfishness, that is to say, to combat one's traditions that are millions of years old? But do people not try very hard to conceal their as-yet unfinished talent in these areas under the concepts of "righteous indignation" and "holy wrath"? These concepts are thus a kind of "fig leaves" with which one covers one's dark or animal nature. And has one not persecuted, tortured and killed one's fellow beings in the name of light during the inquisition and the crusades on the pretext that persecuting fellow beings that dared to think and act differently to the religious and ecclesiastical authorities was the highest morality? All such ways of acting are heathen and have nothing to do with Christianity, as revealed by him who said: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do". And is it not a universal experience among those who in all seriousness have begun to really want to cleanse themselves of the animal traditions, aptitudes and talents that they again and again must cry out like Paul: "The good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do"? And this is of course how things must be as long as the beings' organic structure does not as yet keep them tied to the whole-sex state and therefore to a corresponding degree makes these beings dependent on the principles of darkness. And it could never be otherwise if Providence had not implanted in the being an organic structure for evolving the epoch of light. If this organic function, which transformed the beings into half-sex beings, into the female sex and the male sex, did not continue evolving and now turned the beings into whole-sex beings, light would never shine in the world. For the whole-sex state is but the organic structure through which the light can be created, just as the half-sex state is but the organic structure through which darkness could be created. Precepts and ideals are thus of no use on their own. They are of use only when the transformation into whole-sex beings has already begun. Only where there is talent can a genius be created.