There are authors with truly impressive powers of assimilation, and we realize that they often cannot define whether the ideas they express are their own or come from the references they reveal. Of course, there is some foundation for true learning. In order for an idea to be grasped, it has to be felt as one’s own, even if it is later abandoned. Ideally, however, the greatest intellectual will be the one who encompasses everything and absorbs everything; thus, since nothing is foreign to him, he is able to express everything as his own.