not what it is because those events are past,_ but _because they have left behind them processes which are present. To those processes, however caused, the mind would still respond by feeling a specious present, with one part of it just vanishing or vanished into the past._ As the Creator is supposed to have made Adam with a navel--sign of a birth which never occurred--so He might instantaneously make a man with a brain in which were processes just like the 'fading' ones of an ordinary brain. The first real stimulus after creation would set up a process additional to these. The processes would overlap; and the new-created man would unquestionably have the feeling, at the very primal instant of his life, of having been in existence already some little space of time.
Let me sum up, now, by saying that we are constantly conscious of a certain duration--the specious present--varying in length from a few seconds to probably not more than a minute, and that this duration (with its content perceived as having one part earlier and the other part later) is the original intuition of time. Longer times are conceived by adding, shorter ones by dividing, portions of this vaguely bounded unit, and are habitually thought by us symbolically. Kant's notion of an _intuition_ of objective time as an infinite necessary continuum has nothing to support it. The _cause_ of the intuition which we really have cannot be the _duration_ of our brain-processes or our mental changes. That duration is rather the _object_ of the intuition which, being realized at every moment of such duration, must be due to a permanently present cause. This cause--probably the simultaneous presence of brain-processes of different phase--fluctuates; and hence a certain range of variation in the amount of the intuition, and in its subdivisibility, accrues.
FOOTNOTES: [512] This chapter is reprinted almost verbatim from the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol. xx, p. 374.
[514] "What I find, when I look at consciousness at all, is, that what I cannot divest myself of, or not have in consciousness, if I have consciousness at all, is a sequence of different feelings...The simultaneous perception of both sub-feelings, whether as parts of a coexistence or of a sequence, is the total feeling--the minimum of consciousness--and this minimum has duration...Time-duration, however, is inseparable from the minimum, notwithstanding that, in an isolated moment, we could not tell which part of it came first, which last...We do not require to know that the sub-feelings come in sequence, first one, then the other; nor to know what coming in sequence means. But we have, in any artificially isolated minimum of consciousness, the _rudiments_ of the perception of former and latter in time, in the sub-feeling that grows fainter, and the sub-feeling that grows stronger, and the change between them..."In the next place, I remark that the rudiments of memory are involved in the minimum of consciousness. The first beginnings of it appear in that minimum, just as the first beginnings of perception do. As each member of the change or difference which goes to compose that minimum is the rudiment of a single perception, so the priority of one member to the other, although both are given to consciousness in one empirical present moment, is the rudiment of memory. The fact that the minimum of consciousness is difference or change in feelings, is the ultimate explanation of memory as well as of single perceptions. A former and a latter are included in the minimum of consciousness; and this is what is meant by saying that all consciousness is in the form of _time_, or that time is the form of feeling, the form of sensibility. Crudely and popularly we divide the course of time into past, present, and future; but, strictly speaking, there is no present; it is composed of past and future divided by an indivisible point or instant. That instant, or time-point, is the strict _present_. What we call, loosely, the present, is an empirical portion of the course of time, containing at least a minimum of consciousness, in which the instant of change is the present time-point...If we take this as the present time-point, it is clear that the minimum of feeling contains two portions--a sub-feeling that goes and a sub-feeling that comes. One is remembered, the other imagined. The limits of both are indefinite at beginning and end of the minimum, and ready to melt into other minima, proceeding from other stimuli.
"Time and consciousness do not come to us ready marked out into minima; we have to do that by reflection, asking ourselves, What is the least empirical moment of consciousness? That least empirical moment is what we usually call the present moment; and even this is too minute for ordinary use; the present moment is often extended practically to a few seconds, or even minutes, beyond which we specify what length of time we mean, as the present hour, or day, or year, or century.
"But this popular way of thinking imposes itself on great numbers even of philosophically-minded people, and they talk about the _present_ as if it was a _datum_--as if time came to us marked into present periods like a measuring-tape." (S. H. Hodgson: Philosophy of Reflection, vol.
i, pp. 248-254.)
"The representation of time agrees with that of space in that a certain amount of it must be presented together--included between its initial and terminal limit. A continuous ideation, flowing from one point to another, would indeed _occupy_ time, but not _represent_ it, for it would exchange one element of succession for another instead of grasping the whole succession at once. Both points--the beginning and the end--are equally essential to the conception of time, and must be present with equal clearness together." (Herbart: Psychol. als W., § 115.)
"Assume that...similar pendulum-strokes follow each other at regular intervals in a consciousness otherwise void. When the first one is over, an image of it remains in the fancy until the second succeeds.
This, then, reproduces the first by virtue of the law of association by similarity, but at the same time meets with the aforesaid persisting image...Thus does the simple repetition of the sound provide all the elements of time-perception. The first sound [as it is recalled by association] gives the beginning, the second the end, and the persistent image in the fancy represents the length of the interval.
At the moment of the second impression, the entire time-perception exists at once, for then all its elements are presented together, the second sound and the image in the fancy immediately, and the first impression by reproduction. But, in the same act, we are aware of a state in which only the first sound existed, and of another in which only its image existed in the fancy. Such a consciousness as this _is_ that of time..._In it no succession of ideas takes place._" (Wundt: Physiol. Psych., 1st ed. pp. 681-2.) Note here the assumption that the _persistence_ and the _reproduction_ of an impression are two processes which may go on simultaneously. Also that Wundt's description is merely an _attempt to analyze the 'deliverance'_ of a time-perception, and no _explanation of the manner in which it comes about_.
[516] Locke, in his dim way, derived the sense of duration from reflection on the succession of our ideas (Essay, book ii, chap. xiv, § 3; chap. xv, § 12). Reid justly remarks that if ten successive elements are to make duration, "then one must make duration, otherwise duration must be made up of parts that have no duration, which is impossible...I conclude, therefore, that there must be duration in every single interval or element of which the whole duration is made up. Nothing, indeed, is more certain than that every elementary part of extension must have extension. Now, it must be observed that in these elements of duration, or single intervals of successive ideas, there is no succession of ideas, yet we must conceive them to have duration; whence we may conclude with certainty that _there is a conception of duration where there is no succession of ideas in the mind._" (Intellectual Powers, essay iii, chap. v.) "Qu'on ne cherche point," says Royer-Collard in the Fragments added to Jouffroy's Translation of Reid, "la durée dans la succession; on ne l'y trouvera jamais; la durée a précédé la succession; la notion de la durée a précédé la notion de la succession. Elle en est donc tout-à-fait indépendante, dira-t-on?
Oui, elle en est tout-à-fait indépendante."
[517] Physiol. Psych., ii, 54, 55.
[519] Philosophische Studien, ii, 362.
[520] _Counting_ was of course not permitted. It would have given a symbolic concept and no intuitive or immediate perception of the totality of the series. With counting we may of course compare together series of any length--series whose beginnings have faded from our mind, and of whose totality we retain no sensible impression at all. To count a series of clicks is an altogether different thing from merely perceiving them as discontinuous. In the latter case we need only be conscious of the bits of empty duration between them; in the former we must perform rapid acts of association between them and as many names of numbers.
[521] Estel in Wundt's Philosophische Studien, ii, 50. Mehner, _ibid._ ii, 571. In Dietze's experiments even numbers of strokes were better caught than odd ones, by the ear. The _rapidity of their sequence_ had a great influence on the result. At more than 4 seconds apart it was impossible to perceive series of them as units in all (cf.
Wundt, Physiol. Psych., ii, 214). They were simply counted as so many individual strokes. Below 0.21 to 0.11 second, according to the observer, judgment again became confused. It was found that the rate of succession most favorable for grasping long series was when the strokes were sounded at intervals of from 0.3'' to 0.18' apart. Series of 4, 6, 8, 16 were more easily identified than series of 10, 12, 14, 18. The latter could hardly be clearly grasped at all. Among odd numbers 3, 5, 7 were the series easiest caught; next, 9, 15; hardest of all, 11 and 13; and 17 was impossible to apprehend.
[522] The exact interval of the sparks was 0.00205''. The doubleness of their snap was usually replaced by a single-seeming sound when it fell to 0.00198'', the sound becoming _louder_ when the sparks seemed simultaneous. The _difference_ between these two intervals is only 7/100000 of a second; and, as Exner remarks, our ear and brain must be wonderfully efficient organs to get distinct feelings from so slight an objective difference as this. See Pflüger's Archiv, Bd. xi.
[523] _Ibid._ p. 407. When the sparks fell so close together that their irradiation-circles overlapped, they appeared like _one spark moving_ from the position of the first to that of the second; and they might then follow each other as close as 0.015'' without the _direction of the movement_ ceasing to be clear. When one spark fell on the centre, the other on the margin, of the retina, the time-interval for successive apprehension had to be raised to 0.076''.
[524] Hall and Jastrow: Studies of Rhythm. Mind, xi, 58.
[525] Nevertheless, multitudinous impressions may be felt as discontinuous, though separated by excessively minute intervals of time. Grünhagen says (Pflüger's Archiv, vi, 175) that 10,000 electric shocks a second are felt as interrupted, by the tongue (!). Von Wittich (_ibid._ ii, 329), that between 1000 and 2000 strokes a second are felt as discrete by the finger. W. Preyer, on the other hand (Die Grenzen des Empfindungsvermögens, etc., 1868, p. 15), makes contacts appear continuous to the finger when 36.8 of them follow in a second.
Similarly, Mach (Wiener Sitzgsb., li, 2, 142) gives about 26. Lalanne (Comptes Rendus, i/xxxii, p. 1314) found summation of finger contacts after 22 repetitions in a second. Such discrepant figures are of doubtful worth. On the retina 20 to 30 impressions a second at the very utmost can be felt as discrete when they fail on the same spot.
The ear, which begins to fuse stimuli together into a musical tone when they follow at the rate of a little over 30 a second, can still feel 132 of them a second as discontinuous when they take the shape of 'beats' (Helmholtz, Tonempfindungen, 3d ed. p. 270).
[526] Pflüger's Archiv, xi, 428. Also in Herrmann's Hdbh. d. Physiol., 2 Bd. i, Thl. pp. 260-2.
[527] Pflüger's Archiv, vii, 639. Tigerstedt (Bihang till Kongl.
Svenska Vetenskaps Akad, Handl., Bd. 8, Häfte 2, Stockholm, 1884) revises Exner's figures, and shows that his conclusions are exaggerated. According to Tigerstedt, two observers almost always rightly appreciated 0.05 or 0.06'' of reaction-time difference. Half the time they did it rightly when the difference sank to 0.03'', though from 0.03'' and 0.06'' differences were often not noticed at all.
Buccola found (La Legge del Tempo nei Fenomeni dei Pensiero, Milano, 1883, p. 371) that, after much practice in making rapid reactions upon a signal, he estimated directly, in figures, his own reaction-time, in 10 experiments, with an error of from 0.016'' to 0.018''; in 6, with one of 0.005'' to 0.069''; in one, with one of 0.002''; and in 3, with one of 0.003''.
labors to prove that his law is only overlaid by other interfering laws in the figures recorded by these experimenters; but his case seems to me to be one of desperate infatuation with a hobby. (See Wundt's Philosphische Studien iii, 1.)
[530] Curious discrepancies exist between the German and the American observers with respect to the _direction_ of the error below and above the point of indifference--differences perhaps due the _fatigue_ involved in the American method. The Germans lengthened intervals below it and shortened those above. With seven Americans experimented on by Stevens this was exactly reversed. The German method was to passively listen to the intervals, then judge; the American was to reproduce them actively by movements of the hand. In Mehner's experiments there was found a second indifference point at about 5 seconds, beyond which times were judged again too long. Glass, whose work on the subject is the latest (Philos. Studien, iv, 423) found (when corrections were allowed for) that all times except 0.8 sec. were estimated too short.
He found a series of points of greatest relative accuracy, viz. at 1.5, 2.5, 3.75, 5, 6.25, etc., seconds respectively, and thought that his observations roughly corroborated Weber's law. As 'maximum' and 'minimum' are printed interchangeably in Glass's article it is hard to follow.
[531] With Vierordt and his pupils the indifference point lay as high as from 1.5 sec to 4.9 sec, according to the observer (cf. Der Zeitsinn, 1868, p. 112). In most of these experiments the time heard was actively reproduced, after a short pause, by movements of the hand, which were recorded. Wundt gives good reasons (Physiol. Psych., ii, 289, 290) for rejecting Vierordt's figures as erroneous. Vierordt's book, it should be said, is full of important matter, nevertheless.
[532] Physiol. Psych., ii, 286, 290.
[534] Mind, xi, 400.
observed, are about _one half_ of the rest--sub-multiples, therefore.
It ought to be observed, however, that Buccola's figure has little value, his observations not being well fitted to show this particular point.
[537] Estel's figures led him to think that _all_ the multiples enjoyed this privilege; with Mehner, on the other hand, only the _odd_ multiples showed diminution of the average error; thus, 0.71, 2.15, with the least error. Cf. Phil. Studien, ii, pp. 57, 562-5.
[538] Cf. especially pp. 558-561.
[539] Wundt: Physiol. Psych., ii, 287. Hall and Jastrow: Mind, xi, 62.
[541] The number of distinguishable _differences_ of speed between these limits is, as he takes care to remark, very much larger that 7.
(Der Zeitsinn, p. 137).
[543] I leave the text just as it was printed in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy (for 'Oct. 1886') in 1887. Since then Münsterberg in his masterly Beiträge zur experimentellen Psychologie (Heft 2, 1889) seems to have made it clear what the sensible changes are by which we measure the lapse of time. When the time which separates two sensible impressions is less than one third of a second, he thinks it is almost entirely the amount to which the memory-image of the first impression has faded when the second one overtakes it, which makes us feel how wide they are apart (p. 29). When the time is longer than this, we rely, he thinks, exclusively upon the feelings of muscular tension and relaxation, which we are constantly receiving although we give to them so little of our direct attention.
These feelings are primarily in the muscles by which we adopt our sense-organs in attending to the signals used, some of the muscles being in the eye and ear themselves, some of them in the head, neck, etc. We here judge two time-intervals to be equal when between the beginning and end of each we feel exactly similar relaxations and subsequent expectant tensions of these muscles to have occurred. In reproducing intervals ourselves we try to make our feelings of this sort just what they were when we passively heard the interval. These feelings by themselves, however, can only be used when the intervals are very short, for the tension anticipatory of the terminal stimulus naturally reaches its maximum very soon. With longer intervals we _take the feeling of our inspirations and expirations into account_. With our expirations all the other muscular tensions in our body undergo a rhythmical decrease; with our inspirations the reverse takes place.
When, therefore, we note a time-interval of several seconds with intent to reproduce it, what we seek is to make the earlier and later interval agree in the number and amount of these respiratory changes combined with sense-organ adjustments with which they are filled.
Münsterberg has studied carefully in his own ease the variations of the respiratory factor. They are many; but he sums up his experience by saying that whether he measured by inspirations that were divided by momentary pauses into six parts, or by inspirations that were continuous; whether with sensory tension during inspiration and relaxation during expiration, or by tension during both inspiration and expiration, separated by a sudden interpolated relaxation; whether with special notice taken of the cephalic tensions, or of those in the trunk and shoulders, in all cases alike and without exception he involuntarily endeavored, whenever he compared two times or tried to make one the same as the other, to get exactly the same respiratory conditions and conditions of tension, _all_ the subjective conditions, in short, _exactly_ the same during the second interval as they were during the first. Münsterberg corroborated his subjective observations by experiments. The observer of the time had to reproduce as exactly as possible an interval between two sharp sounds given him by an assistant. The only condition imposed upon him was that he should not modify his breathing for the purposes of measurement. It was then found that when the assistant broke in at random with his signals, the judgment of the observer was vastly less accurate than when the assistant carefully watched the observer's breathing and made both the beginning of the time given him and that of the time which he was to give coincide with identical phases thereof.--Finally, Münsterberg with great plausibility tries to explain the discrepancies between the results of Vierordt, Estel, Mehner, Glass, etc., as due to the fact that they _did not all use the same measure_. Some breathe a little faster, some a little slower. Some break their inspirations into two parts, some do not, etc. The coincidence of the objective times measured with definite natural phases of breathing would very easily give periodical maxima of facility in measuring accurately.
[544] "Any one wishing yet further examples of this mental substitution will find one on observing how habitually he thinks of the spaces on the clock-face instead of the periods they stand for; how, on discovering it to be half an hour later than be supposed, he does not represent the half hour in its duration, but scarcely passes beyond the sign of it marked by the finger." (H. Spencer: Psychology, § 336.)
[545] The only objections to this which I can think of are: (1) The accuracy with which some men judge of the hour of day or night without looking at the clock; (2) the faculty some have of waking at a preappointed hour; (3) the accuracy of time-perception reported to exist in certain trance-subjects. It might seem that in these persons some sort of a sub-conscious record was kept of the lapse of time _per se_. But this cannot be admitted until it is proved that there are no physiological processes, the feeling of whose course may serve as a _sign_ of how much time has sped, and so lead us to infer the hour. That there are such processes it is hardly possible to doubt. An ingenious friend of mine was long puzzled to know why each day of the week had such a characteristic physiognomy to him. That of Sunday was soon noticed to be due to the cessation of the city's rumbling, and the sound of people's feet shuffling on the sidewalk; of Monday, to come from the clothes drying in the yard and casting a white reflection on the ceiling; of Tuesday, to a cause which I forget; and I think my friend did not get beyond Wednesday. Probably each hour in the day has for most of us some outer or inner sign associated with it as closely as these signs with the days of the week. It must be admitted, after all, however, that the great improvement of the time-perception during sleep and trance is a mystery not as yet cleared up. All my life I have been struck by the accuracy with which I will wake at the same exact minute night after night and morning after morning, if only the habit fortuitously begins. The organic registration in me is independent of sleep. After lying in bed a long time awake I suddenly rise without knowing the time, and for days and weeks together will do so at an identical minute by the clock, as if some inward physiological process caused the act by punctually running down.-—Idiots are said sometimes to possess the time-measuring faculty in a marked degree. I have an interesting manuscript account of an idiot girl which says: "She was punctual almost to a minute in her demand for food and other regular attentions. Her dinner was generally furnished her at 12.30 p. m., and at that hour she would begin to scream if it were not forthcoming. If on Fast-day or Thanksgiving it were delayed, in accordance with the New England custom, she screamed from her usual dinner-hour until the food was carried to her. On the next day, however, she again made known her wants promptly at 12.30. Any slight attention shown her on one day was demanded on the next at the corresponding hour. If an orange were given her at 4 p. m. on Wednesday, at the same hour on Thursday she made known her expectation, and if the fruit were not given her she continued to call for it at intervals for two or three hours. At four on Friday the process would be repeated but would last less long; and so on for two or three days. If one of her sisters visited her accidentally at a certain hour, the sharp piercing scream was sure to summon her at the same hour the next day," etc., etc.--For these obscure matters consult C. Du Prel: The Philosophy of Mysticism, chap.
iii, § 1.
[546] Ideale Fragen (1878). p. 219 (Essay, 'Zeit und Weile').
[547] Revue Philosophique, vol. iii, p. 496.
[548] "Empty time is most strongly perceived when it comes as a _pause_ in music or in speech. Suppose a preacher in the pulpit, a professor at his desk, to stick still in the midst of his discourse; or let a composer (as is sometimes purposely done) make all his instruments stop at once; we await every instant the resumption of the performance, and, in this awaiting, perceive, more than in any other possible way, the empty time. To change the example, let, in a piece of polyphonic music--a figure, for instance, in which a tangle of melodies are under way--suddenly a single voice be heard, which sustains a long note, while all else is hushed...This one note will appear very protracted--why? Because we _expect_ to hear accompanying it the notes of the other instruments, but they fail to come." (Herbart: Psychol.
[549] A night of pain will seem terribly long: we keep looking forward to a moment which never comes--the moment when it shall cease. But the odiousness of this experience is not named _ennui_ or _Langweile_, like the odiousness of time that seems long from its emptiness. The more positive odiousness of the pain, rather, is what tinges our memory of the night. What we feel, as Prof. Lazarus says (_op. cit._ p. 202), is the long time of the suffering, not the suffering of the long time _per se_.
[550] On these variations of time-estimate, cf. Romanes, Consciousness of Time, in Mind, vol. iii, p. 297; J. Sully, Illusions, pp. 245-261, 302-305; W. Wundt. Physiol. Psych., ii, 287, 288; besides the essays quoted from Lazarus and Janet. In German, the successors of Herbart have treated of this subject: compare Volkmann's Lehrbuch d. Psych., § 89, and for references to other authors his note 3 to this section.
Lindner (Lbh. d. empir. Psych.), as a parallel effect, instances Alexander the Great's life (thirty-three years), which seems to us as if it must be long, because it was so eventful. Similarly the English Commonwealth, etc.
[552] Succession, time _per se_, is no force. Our talk about its devouring tooth, etc., is all elliptical. Its contents are what devour.
The law of inertia is incompatible with time's being assumed as an efficient cause of anything.
[554] The cause of the perceiving, not the object perceived!
[555] "'No more' and 'not yet' are the proper time-feelings, and we are aware of time in no other way than through these feelings," says Volkmann (Psychol., § 87). This, which is not strictly true of our feeling of _time per se_, as an elementary bit of duration, is true of our feeling of _date_ in its events.
[556] We construct the miles just as we construct the years. Travelling in the cars makes a succession of different fields of view pass before our eyes. When those that have passed from present sight revive in memory, they maintain their mutual order because their contents overlap. We think them as having been before or behind each other; and, from the multitude of the views we can recall behind the one now presented, we compute the total space we have passed through.
It is often said that the perception of time develops later than that of space, because children have so vague an idea of all dates before yesterday and after to-morrow. But no vaguer than they have of extensions that exceed as greatly their unit of space-intuition.
Recently I heard my child of four tell a visitor that he had been 'as much as one week' in the country. As he had been there three months, the visitor expressed surprise; whereupon the child corrected himself by saying he had been there 'twelve years.' But the child made exactly the same kind of mistake when he asked if Boston was not one hundred miles from Cambridge, the distance being three miles.
[557] Most of these explanations simply give the _signs_ which, adhering to impressions, lead us to date them within a duration, or, in other words, to assign to them their order. Why it should be a _time_-order, however, is not explained. Herbart's would-be explanation is a simple description of time-perception. He says it comes when, with the last member of a series present to our consciousness, we also think of the first; and then the whole series revives in our thought at once, but with strength diminishing in the backward direction (Psychol. als Wiss., § 115; Lehrb. zur Psychol., §§ 171, 172, 175).
Similarly Drobisch, who adds that the series must appear as one already _elapsed_ (_durchlaufene_), a word which shows even more clearly the question-begging nature of this sort of account (Empirische Psychol., § 59). Th. Waitz is guilty of similar question-begging when he explains our time-consciousness to be engendered by a set of unsuccessful attempts to make our percepts agree with our account of past representations striving to drive present ones out of the seat of consciousness, being driven _back_ by them, etc., suffers from the same fallacy (Psychol., § 87). But all such accounts agree in implying one fact—-viz., that the brain-processes of various events must be active simultaneously, and in varying strength, for a time-perception to be possible. Later authors have made this idea more precise. Thus, Lipps: "Sensations arise, occupy consciousness, fade into images, and vanish. According as two of them, _a_ and _b_, go through this process simultaneously, or as one precedes or follows the other, the _phases of their fading_ will agree or differ; and the difference will be proportional to the time-difference between their several moments of beginning. Thus there are differences of _quality_ in the images, which the mind may _translate_ into corresponding differences of their temporal order. There is no other possible middle term between the objective time-relations and those in the mind than these differences of phase." (Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens, p. 588.)
Lipps accordingly calls them 'temporal signs,' and hastens explicitly to add that the soul's translation of their order of strength into a time-order is entirely inexplicable (p. 591). M. Guyau's account (Revue Philosophique, xix, 353) hardly differs from that of his predecessors, except in picturesqueness of style. Every change leaves a series of _trainées lumineuses_ in the mind like the passage of shooting stars.
Each image is in a more fading phase, according as its original was more remote. This group of images gives duration, the mere time-form, the 'bed' of time. The distinction of past, present, and future within the bed comes from our active nature. The future (as with Waitz) is what I want, but have not yet got, and must wait for. All this is doubtless true, but is no _explanation_.
Mr. Ward gives, in his Encyclopædia Britannica article (Psychology, p. 65, col. 1), a still more refined attempt to specify the 'temporal sign.' The problem being, among a number of other things thought as successive, but simultaneously thought, to determine which is first and which last, he says: "After each distinct representation, _a b c d,_ there may intervene the representation of that _movement of attention_ of which we are aware in passing from one object to another. In our present reminiscence we have, it must be allowed, little direct proof of this intervention; though there is, I think, indirect evidence of it in the tendency of the flow of ideas to follow the order in which the presentations were at first attended to. With the movement itself when the direction of attention changes, we are familiar enough, though the residua of such movements are not ordinarily conspicuous. These residua, then, are our temporal signs...But temporal signs alone will not furnish all the pictorial exactness of the time-perspective.
These give us only a fixed series; but the law of obliviscence, by insuring a progressive variation in intensity as we pass from one member of the series to the other, yields the effect which we call time-distance. By themselves such variations in intensity would leave us liable to confound more vivid representations in the distance with fainter ones nearer the present, but from this mistake the temporal signs save us; where the memory-continuum is imperfect such mistakes continually occur. On the other hand, where these variations are slight and imperceptible, though the memory-continuum preserves the order of events intact, we have still no such distinct appreciation of comparative distance in time as we have nearer to the present, where these perceptive effects are considerable...Locke speaks of our ideas succeeding each other 'at certain distances not much unlike the images in the inside of a lantern turned round by the heat of a candle,' and 'guesses' that 'this appearance of theirs in train varies not very much in a waking man.' _Now what is this 'distance' that separates a from b, b from c, and so on;_ and what means have we of knowing that it is tolerably constant in waking life? _It is, probably, that, the residuum of which I have called a temporal sign; or, in other words, it is the movement of attention from a to b._" Nevertheless, Mr. Ward does not call our feeling of this movement of attention the _original_ of our feeling of time, or its brain-process the brain-process which directly causes us to perceive time. He says, a moment later, that "though the fixation of attention does of course really occupy time, it is probably not in the first instance perceived as time--i.e. as continuous 'protensity,' to use a term of Hamilton's--but as intensity.
Thus, if this supposition be true, there is an element in our concrete time perceptions which has no place in our abstract conception of Time. In Time physically conceived there is no trace of intensity; in time psychically experienced, duration is primarily an intensive magnitude, and so far literally a perception." Its 'original' is, then, if I understand Mr Ward, something like a _feeling_ which accompanies, as pleasure and pain may accompany, the movements of attention. Its brain-process must, it would seem, be assimilated in general type to the brain-processes of pleasure and pain. Such would seem more or less consciously to be Mr. Ward's own view, for he says: "Everybody knows what it is to be distracted by a rapid succession of varied impressions, and equally what it is to be wearied by the slow and monotonous recurrence of the same impressions. Now these 'feelings' of distraction and tedium owe their characteristic qualities to movements of attention. In the first, attention is kept incessantly on the move; before it is accommodated to _a_, it is disturbed by the suddenness, intensity, and novelty of _b_; in the second, it is