190 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



as our illustration. When we say that a sermon is long 

 or short, what we do is to compare it mentally with what 

 we are accustomed to regard as the normal length of a 

 sermon ; we judge that its duration appreciably exceeds 

 or falls below a period of (say) twenty minutes. That is 

 to say we compare two unmeasured periods our recol 

 lection of twenty minutes, and the duration of the sermon 

 we have just listened to. Neither can have any approach 

 to real accuracy, and the second is liable to extreme varia 

 tions in different individuals, or even the same individual 

 at different times. To one man, if it expresses views in 

 which he is not interested, it may appear unendurably 

 long ; his friend sitting by him may have been interested, 

 and he will say that it was short. Either judgement will 

 have been true or valid for the man who gives it, but the 

 discrimination will have been of weariness, and not really 

 of time, and neither will be of any validity for a bystander, 

 or, let us say, for the preacher. Though the judgement 

 is no doubt one of duration, what we have calculated by 

 is not the time, but the mental experience we have passed 

 through in the interval. To a man who is momentarily 

 expecting bad news, ten minutes will seem as long as half 

 a century ; to another, who is listening to fine music or 

 noble oratory, hours will pass like minutes. If the mind is 

 perfectly at rest there is no sense of time. Defects in point 

 of exactitude are obvious. No one would pretend to decide, 

 without looking at his watch, that the sermon he had just 

 listened to had lasted so many minutes and so many 

 seconds. In order to remedy these two defects, that is to say, 

 to supply both universal validity and exactness, recourse 

 must be had to measurement ; that is to say, the number 

 of rhythmical beats, or of subdivisions of space, that have 

 passed between the beginning of the sermon and the end, 

 must be counted. 



But, however great the differences of estimate may be, 

 they do not justify a denial of temporal quality to the 

 subjective state. As long as consciousness subsists, it will 

 be attended by some idea of a lapse of time, and when it is 



