One of the things Barfield keeps pointing out in History in English Words is how difficult it is to come up with a new word–to think one’s way to clarity about something and name it. He watches the English language expand and a lot of it is due to foreign influence–we take words from other languages, but what really happens is not that words wander in, but ways of thinking cross. He is marvelous for seeing a pattern in it and pointing it out–the evolution of consciousness.
It makes one wonder what exactly it was our race lost at Babel if the result has been such enrichment and wealth. It makes one speculate that Barfield would answer in terms of consciousness.
