[Gnewt]

Another commenter linked to the Wikipedia article on Bicameralism. If you're interested, you might want to check out "The Origin Of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"[0] by Julian Jaynes. The jury is (mostly?) still out on whether or not Jaynes is a quack, but he asserts that humans used to be unconscious, bicameral beings who "heard" voices in their heads that would direct them to do things. I put "heard" in quotes because Jaynes thinks the entirely process was fully unconscious (in terms of the subjective consciousness we experience), but that as consciousness developed, people literally heard voices in their heads for a long time.

Socrates' voice absolutely reminds me of this. Jaynes thinks that the first "conscious" humans literally heard the "voices of gods" and that we eventually evolved to lose that as subjective consciousness took over performing the same function.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009MBTRHA/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...