I imagine that language’s original function was not to specify, but to catalyze and direct attention to features of shared context or experience. This meant that, effectively, it catalyzed imaginal connections, and was a way to jump-start the process of making connections between phenomenon. Later, as it began to be a way of having a mind in its own right, it became self-involved; now language was a way of being in its own right, and could usurp the imagination’s throne as the organizing principle of waking consciousness. The voice of language came to mean the authority overseeing analysis. The measurer who proclaims identity, value, function, and relationship not on their terms, but its own. This is a strange and dangerous transformation — as if a tool became a god overnight, and thereafter commanded its makers and users almost absolutely, and without their being aware of the change.