In 1917 T. S. Eliot compared the literary critic to a bee building a hive. Even the most gifted thinker, he claimed, is unable to conceive more than a few original ideas:

This conception of the cooperative nature of the literary enterprise is grounded in what Eliot called “the old aporia of Authority v. Individual Judgment” (PP [New York], p. 113). Although he found the criterion for genuine art within the literary tradition, his innovative conception of that tradition also gave authority to the individual artist. He developed his traditionalism with such hive-building thoroughness that it seemed revolutionary rather than conventional. In describing such “new ideas,” Eliot observed that an old idea may be “so perfectly assimilated as to be original.” His deep assimilation of the “old aporia” of tradition and the individual made it a virtually new concept.