17

So far as the superstitions of the logicians are concerned, I will never tire of emphasizing over and over again a small brief fact which these superstitious types are unhappy to concede - namely, that a thought comes when "it" wants to and not when "I" wish, so that it's a falsification of the facts to say that the subject "I" is the condition of the predicate "think." It thinks: but that this "it" is precisely that old, celebrated "I" is, to put it mildly, only an assumption, an assertion, in no way an "immediate certainty." After all, we've already done too much with this "it thinks": this "it" already contains an interpretation of the event and is not part of the process itself. Following grammatical habits we conclude here as follows: "Thinking is an activity. To every activity belongs someone who does the action, therefore -." With something close to this same pattern, the older atomists, in addition to the "force" which created effects, also looked for that clump of matter where the force was located, out of which it worked - the atom. Stronger heads finally learned how to cope without this "remnant of earth," and perhaps one day people, including even the logicians, will also grow accustomed to cope without that little "it" (to which the honourable old "I" has reduced itself).