The Illusion of Originality There is a particular kind of quiet pride that accompanies a new thought. The sudden sense of arrival — I’ve got it — as though the mind had just invented something the universe had been waiting for. It feels clean. Sovereign. Entirely one’s own. But sit with that feeling long enough, and it begins to shift. Where did the words come from — the very ones used to frame the thought? Inherited. Where did the categories of meaning come from, the mental