 In our ordinary experience and in the sciences, the thinker or observer loses himself in a manner in the particular object he is perceiving or the truth he is proving. That is what he is thinking about, and not about himself; and, though knowledge and perception imply both the distinction of the thinker from the object and the active working of that distinction, we must not confuse this with the statement that the thinking subject, in actualizing this distinction, thinks explicitly about himself, and his own activity, as distinct from the object. (SI, 79)