Originality

I have wanted to try to expel that quite unchristian worship of the human individual [. . .] I mean the pestilent notion (one sees it in literary criticism) that each of us starts with a treasure called “Personality” locked up inside him, and that to expand and express this, to guard it from interference, to be “original,” is the main end of life. This is Pelagian, or worse, and it defeats even itself. No man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the work’s sake, and what men call originality will come unsought. Even on that level, the submission of the individual to the function is already beginning to bring true Personality to birth.

- The Weight of Glory