"As for the superstitions of the logicians, I shall never tire of underlining a concise little fact which these superstitious people are loath to admit -- namely, that a thought comes when `it' wants, not when `I' want; so that it is a falsification of the facts to say: the subject `I' is the condition of the predicate `think'. It thinks: but that this `it' is precisely that famous old `I' is, to put it mildly, only an assumption, an assertion, above all not an `immediate certainty'. For even with this `it thinks' one has already gone too far: this `it' already contains an interpretation of the event and does not belong to the event itself. The inference here is in accordance with the habit of grammar: `thinking is an activity, to every activity pertains one who acts, consequently --'. It was more or less in accordance with the same scheme that the older atomism sought, in addition to the `force' which acts, that little lump of matter in which it resides, out of which it acts, the atom; more rigorous minds at last learned to get along without this `residuum of earth', and perhaps we and the logicians as well will one day accustom ourselves to getting along without that little `it' (which is what the honest old `I' has evaporated into)."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche,
from Beyond Good and Evil

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