ks. My theory about it is that the most important
thing in this world for a man's life is his being original in it. Being
original consists, I take it, not in being different, but in being
honest--really having something in one's own inner experience which one
has anyway, and which one knows one has, and which one has all for one's
own, whether any one else has ever had it or not. Being original
consists in making over everything one sees and reads, into one's self.

Making over what one reads into one's self may be said to be the only
way to have a really safe place for knowledge. If a man takes his
knowledge and works it all over into what he is, sense and spirit, it
may cost more at first, but it is more economical in the long run,
because none of it can possibly be lost. And it can all be used on the
place.

I do not know how it is with others nowadays, but I find that this
feeling of originality in an experience, in my own case, is exceedingly
hard to keep. It has to be struggled for.

Of course, one has a theory in a general way that one does not want an
original mind if he has to get it by keeping other people's minds off,
and yet there is a certain sense in which if he does not do it at
certain times--have regular periods of keeping other people's minds off,
he would lose for life the power of ever finding his own under them.
Most men one knows nowadays, if they were to spend all the rest of their
lives peeling other men's minds off, would not get down to their own
before they died. It seems to be supposed that what a mind is for--at
least in civilisation--is to have other men's minds on top of it.

It is the same way in books--at least I find it so myself when I get to
reading in a book, reading so fast I cannot stop in it. Nearly all
books, especially the good ones, have a way of overtaking a man--riding
his originality down. It seems to be assumed that if a man ever did get
down to his own mind by accident, whether in a book or anywhere else, he
would not know what to do with it.

And this is not an unreasonable assumption. Even the man who gets down
to his mind regularly hardly knows what to do with it part of the time.
But it makes having a mind interesting. There's a kind of pleasant,
lusty feeling in it--a feeling of reality and honesty that makes having
a mind--even merely one's own mind--seem almost respectable.

IV

Reading Backwards

Sir Joshua Reynolds gives the precedence to the Outside,