Penser la bouche pleine (thinking the mouth full). We must take time to marvel at this remarkable title, which, in a single phrase, encapsulates all the originality of the essay published in 1975. Judith Schlanger endeavours in her essay to understand the sudden emergence of thoughts, their ability to trigger events and innovation, and also what she refers to as the abundant, overflowing “cultural mass” that constitutes this emergence of thought. Not just what it depends on, but what it is genuinely, materially and heuristically composed of. When we think “the full mouth”, we inevitably think: full of inherited words, recurring phrases. Yet we always think anew. Something here must be understood that is not a paradox, but the very substance of thought.