"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 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.
The Alternative, p.167.
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 duration must have duration, as 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; in 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."
Physiol.Psych.," II.54, 55.
Ibid.II.213.
Philosophische Studien, II.362.
