try to make a god of him. NONE BUT GODS HAVE EVER HAD A THOUGHT WHICH
DID NOT COME FROM THE OUTSIDE. Adam probably had a good head, but it was
of no sort of use to him until it was filled up FROM THE OUTSIDE. He was
not able to invent the triflingest little thing with it. He had not a
shadow of a notion of the difference between good and evil--he had to get
the idea FROM THE OUTSIDE. Neither he nor Eve was able to originate the
idea that it was immodest to go naked; the knowledge came in with the
apple FROM THE OUTSIDE. A man's brain is so constructed that IT CAN
ORIGINATE NOTHING WHATSOEVER. It can only use material obtained OUTSIDE.
It is merely a machine; and it works automatically, not by will-power.
IT HAS NO COMMAND OVER ITSELF, ITS OWNER HAS NO COMMAND OVER IT.

Y.M. Well, never mind Adam: but certainly Shakespeare's creations--

O.M. No, you mean Shakespeare's IMITATIONS. Shakespeare created
nothing. He correctly observed, and he marvelously painted. He exactly
portrayed people whom GOD had created; but he created none himself. Let
us spare him the slander of charging him with trying. Shakespeare could
not create. HE WAS A MACHINE, AND MACHINES DO NOT CREATE.

Y.M. Where WAS his excellence, then?

O.M. In this. He was not a sewing-machine, like you and me; he was a
Gobelin loom. The threads and the colors came into him FROM THE OUTSIDE;
outside influences, suggestions, EXPERIENCES (reading, seeing plays,
playing plays, borrowing ideas, and so on), framed the patterns in his
mind and started up his complex and admirable machinery, and IT
AUTOMATICALLY turned out that pictured and gorgeous fabric which still
compels the astonishment of the world. If Shakespeare had been born and
bred on a barren and unvisited rock in the ocean his mighty intellect