In 1802, Immanuel Kant discharged the man (named Lampe) who had faithfully served him for many years. He proved unable, however, to dismiss Lampe from his mind.

The troubled philosopher finally entered a memorandum in his notebook: "Remember," it read, "from now on the name of Lampe must be completely forgotten."

["In Kant," the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann once remarked, "there were many things that I could grasp so little that given his general acuity of mind I almost suspected that he was pulling the reader's leg or was even an imposter."]