Borges had the recurring theory that all human invention had already been developed in the past, that all lives had been lived, and that all books had already been written. The circular ruins, the dream within the dream, the labyrinths, the thousand men who were that Virgil, Homer, or Aristotle; perhaps Confucius was a dream of Borges, or Borges a dream of Confucius; wonder why all the nonsense in the world takes on substance and serenity when it is attributed to Confucius.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
