ORIGIN OF THE NOTION OF TIME. 



the meaning of the terms white or red, we can point to the lily 

 and the rose, and thus supersede verbal definition. We cannot 

 define the notes of the nightingale or the lark, but if we walk 

 forth in the night or at the early dawn, the one or the other will 

 discourse music more eloquent than definition. 



Can we then, by a like appeal to the senses, obtain a notion of 

 what is expressed by the word TIME ? Which organ does it 

 address ? Time cannot be seen, heard, felt, tasted or smelled. 

 It cannot be seized and submitted to observation and analysis. 

 It is the most fleeting of all perceptions. Moment follows 

 moment in never ceasing succession, but no moment can be said 

 to have any continued existence, so as to be submitted to 

 contemplation. 



3. Metaphysicians differ as to the mental process by which we 

 acquire a perception of duration, but they agree generally that its 

 origin is closely connected with the succession of our thoughts and 

 ideas. From our observation and consciousness of this succession, 

 and from that alone, does our original conception of time proceed. 

 When the mind has once been stored with ideas and perceptions 

 derived by the senses from external objects, the memory can at will 

 reproduce them and marshal them in infinitely various series before 

 the imagination. Of such succession of thoughts and feelings 

 thus evoked by memory we are as distinctly conscious as we are 

 of those derived directly from external objects, and by that con- 

 sciousness we acquire a perception of time when no external 

 objects are presented to the senses. Thus if during the darkness 

 of night we lie awake, a constant succession of thoughts and 

 images pass through the mind, consisting altogether of various 

 ideas and combinations supplied by the memory. This succession 

 of notions creates a consciousness from which we derive a per- 

 ception of a certain lapse of time. 



4. That an actual succession of thoughts, emotions, ideas or 

 images, whether they proceed directly from external objects or 

 arise from the operations of memory, reflection, or imagination, 

 is absolutely necessary to our perception of time is demonstrated 

 by the fact that whenever such succession ceases, our percep- 

 tion of time ceases with it. Thus in profound sleep without 

 dreaming, we have no perception whatever of duration. Having 

 gone to sleep at night, and waking, in the morning it is true that 

 we know that a certain definite interval has elapsed, but we 

 derive this knowledge by inference from external phenomena and 

 not at all from consciousness. We see that the darkness of night 

 has changed to the light of day ; that the sun which was below 

 the horizon is above it, and we know by past experience that 

 these changes are only produced in a certain interval of time, and 



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