The history of language gives us a reflection of the evolution
of human consciousness. It points to a time before we became
aware of our own existence as distinct Selves observing a world
“out there” and separate from ourselves. How accurate
(or inaccurate) our own experience of a subject-object dualism
is can be properly assessed only against the background of
the evolution of consciousness, so far as it can be traced.
Oddly, though, contemporary evolutionary theory has not had
much to say about the evolution of consciousness, even though
the evolved character of our own consciousness unavoidably
frames and limits our theory of evolution. The ancients read
the ‘face’ of what we think of as the outer world rather as
we today can still read the face of another human being — that
is, they read material phenomena as expressions of inner being.
Can we learn anything by setting their experience over against
our own alienation from the outer world? This may be the
same question as, “Can we overcome the dualistic heritage of
the past several centuries?”