You said: "I am not sure of the meaning..."

It is simply that a choice to LIVE, even as counterfeit, was made during the course of our history/evolution on the false belief that life is sacred only when embodied in the Human or Man; hence "for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man."

All life is sacred regardless of its manifestation and those who understand that accept their part in Nature's glorious symphony of sacrifice, those who did not, and do not, have condemned the rest of us to a living hell.