But you believe then in the existence of a paradise in the earliest days of mankind?

—Even if it was a hell […] at any rate it was not unreal.

The relational experiences of man in the earliest days were certainly not tame and pleasant. But rather force exercised on being that is really lived than a shadowy solicitude for faceless numbers! From the former a way leads to God, from the latter only one to nothingness.

Martin Buber, I and Thou, translated by Ronald Gregor Smith