—That melancholy of our fate, then, arose in earliest history?
—Indeed, yes—in so far as the conscious life of man arose in earliest history. But conscious life means the return of cosmic being as human becoming. Spirit appears in time as a product even as a by-product of nature, yet it is in spirit that nature is timelessly enveloped.
The opposition of the two primary words has many names at different times and in different worlds; but in its nameless truth it is inherent in creation.
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—But you believe then in the existence of a paradise in the earliest days of mankind?
—Even if it was a hell—and certainly that time to which I can go back in historical thought was full of fury and anguish and torment and cruelty—at any rate it was not unreal.
The relational experiences of man in earliest days were certainly not tame and pleasant. But rather force exercised on being that is really lived than shadowy solicitude for faceless numbers! From the former a way leads to God, from the latter only one to nothingness.