“Going where no man has gone before is more difficult than it sounds. Our cousins and ancestors were no less curious than we are, and were perhaps bolder. This world is their tomb.You should look under the bed.”

“Ryan and Jethá propose that our ancestors, at least from 200,000 years ago, were living in a world of plenty where the resources of food and sex were in abundance but were choosing to stay hungry. After a couple of hundred thousand years of this ‘Eden’ we apparently forgot who we were, got our appetites back, and before we knew it we were drowning under babies we no longer chose to dispose of at birth.”

“Ah! What would the world be to usIf the children were no more?We should dread the desert behind usWorse than the dark before.”

“Our ancestors derived less from life than we do, but they also expected much less and were less intent on controlling the future. We are of the arrogant generations who believe a lasting happiness was promised to us at birth. Promised? By whom?”

“It was not right, thought Han Fei-tzu, for his wife to die before him: her ancestor-of-the-heart had outlived her husband. Besides, wives should live longer than husbands. Women were more complete inside themselves. They were also better at living in their children. They were never as solitary as a man alone.”

“Somewhere along the way we have gone astray. The human anthill is richer than ever before. We have more wealth and more leisure, and yet we lack something essential, which we find it difficult to describe. We feel less human; somewhere we have lost our mysterious prerogatives.”