I don't get it at all. It just seems like a lot of nonsense.

I came across another translation in English of this section. It is a little more comprehensible. Certainly eating, drinking, procreating, etc., are also genuinely human functions. But taken abstractly, separated from the sphere of all other human activity and turned into sole and ultimate ends, they are animal functions.

Shana, I agree with you. I think I get the overall point, but the last sentence especially, doesn't make much sense to me. The overall point is also poorly written, whatever it is. If seems to say "dressing-up" is an animal function? Really? I thought only humans wore clothes. And humans are animals; we are primates, to be specific. I guess the word "worker" suggests some humans have jobs that are no better than what animals do - pure physical labour, for example. Throughout history, most humans worked at back-breaking agricultural labor and had little time or energy for anything more "human". If that is the point, it could be made much more clearly! Probably this is just a bad translation you have come across.

Hi Shana, it looks like the 'separate's them' is referring to the animal functions (eating, drinking, procreating). Basically, even though these functions are also human, when the human element is removed from them, they are animal functions.