ioo "BECOMING" 



This paradox seems to be explained by the fact 

 pointed out in chapter in that time comes into our 

 consciousness by two routes. We picture the mind like 

 an editor in his sanctum receiving through the nerves 

 scrappy messages from all over the outside world, and 

 making a story of them with, I fear, a good deal of 

 editorial invention. Like other physical quantities time 

 enters in that way as a particular measurable relation 

 between events in the outside world; but it comes in 

 without its arrow. In addition our editor himself ex- 

 periences a time in his consciousness — the temporal 

 relation along his own track through the world. This 

 experience is immediate, not a message from outside, 

 but the editor realises that what he is experiencing is 

 equivalent to the time described in the messages. Now 

 consciousness declares that this private time possesses 

 an arrow, and so gives a hint to search further for the 

 missing arrow among the messages. The curious thing 

 is that, although the arrow is ultimately found among 

 the messages from outside, it is not found in the mes- 

 sages from clocks, but in messages from thermometers 

 and the like instruments which do not ordinarily pretend 

 to measure time. 



Consciousness, besides detecting time's arrow, also 

 roughly measures the passage of time. It has the right 

 idea of time-measurement, but is a bit of a bungler in 

 carrying it out. Our consciousness somehow manages 

 to keep in close touch with the material world, and we 

 must suppose that its record of the flight of time is the 

 reading of some kind of a clock in the material of the 

 brain — possibly a clock which is a rather bad time- 

 keeper. I have generally had in mind in this connection 

 an analogy with the clocks of physics designed for good 

 time-keeping; but I am now inclined to think that a 



