Every moment of thought when it can be placed under scrutiny, when for some reason it has become present-at-hand, seems to carry with it the entire root system by which it emerged, a sort of Brownian path of appetitive leaps through prior thoughts and partial thoughts of which it is the terminal. You can retrace this some small way, except that since each node is over-determined, the way back is as much a branching tree as the way forward seemed to be. Writers expert in stream-of-consciousness fall victim to a mushrooming of content which suggests that it would take a lifetime to fully document the context of the smallest thought. To trace a thought to its source in this sense is not the same as to trace consciousness to its source, but in either case it seems as if it is something we ought to be able to do. To think a thought is to inhabit that thought, to have re-created it in some sense, and if we utter it we are expected to be able to answer for it. Similarly consciousness sees itself as transparency and as self-grounded. It is in the very nature of these phenomena, as they are understood, where their understanding and their being are one, to be self-illumined. Clearly this is not the case in either respect, we fail in performance. Consciousness is credit, is nothing but paper currency, a social conspiracy - but who is it that is being misled? And why is it this very image, this miniaturised version of god, that is the lure of the deception? Surely intelligence could be embodied more efficiently? Is it only "training wheels"?