So far, all our analysis has been about how and why the bicameral mind collapsed. It could indeed be asked at this point why man did not simply revert to his previous condition. Sometimes he did. But the inertia of the more complex cultures prevented the return to tribal life. Man was trapped in his own civilization. Huge cities simply are there, and their ponderous habits of working keep going even as their divine control lapses away. Language too is a brake upon social change. The bicameral mind was an offshoot of the acquisition of language, and language by this time had a vocabulary demanding such attention to a civilized environment as to make a reversion to something of at least 5000 years earlier almost impossible.

• life
• time
• change
• language
• control
• attention
• bicameral mind
• environment
• civilization
• analysis