For if consciousness is based on language, then it follows that it is of much more recent origin than has been heretofore supposed. Consciousness come after language! The implications of such a position are extremely serious.

I shall state my thesis plain. The first poets were gods. Poetry began with the bicameral mind.

If we would understand the Scientific Revolution correctly, we should always remember that its most powerful impetus was the unremitting search for hidden divinity. As such, it is a direct descendant of the breakdown of the bicameral mind.

It is by metaphor that language grows.

The vestiges of the bicameral mind do not exist in any empty psychological space.

We can only know in the nervous system what we have known in behavior first.

Our search for certainty rests in our attempts at understanding the history of all individual selves and all civilizations. Beyond that, there is only awe.