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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: is a plagiarist pure and simple. He will never borrow from others that
which he has not already, more or less, thought out for himself. When
once a great idea, instinctive, inductive (for the two expressions are
nearer akin than most fancy), has dawned on his soul, he will welcome
lovingly, awfully, any corroboration from foreign schools, and cry with
joy: "Behold, this is not altogether a dream: for others have found it
also. Surely it must be real, universal, eternal." No; be sure there
is far more originality (in the common sense of the word), and far less
(in the true sense of the word), than we fancy; and that it is a paltry
and shallow doctrine which represents each succeeding school as merely
the puppets and dupes of the preceding. More originality, because each
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