196 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



The very essence of duration and motion is that they are unceas- 

 ingly being done. Algebra can represent results and positions, but 

 not duration and motion themselves. Mathematics can make the 

 intervals very small, but however small they may be, mathematics 

 places itself at the extremity of the interval and leaves duration and 

 motion entirely out of the question, because they are mental syn- 

 theses and not objects. Duration has no identical moments, or 

 moments that are external to one another; it is heterogeneous, con- 

 tinuous, and in no way resembles number. There is neither duration 

 nor succession in space, that is if we give these words the meanings 

 which consciousness does. Space is homogeneous, and belongs to the 

 external world, while duration and succession belong to the con- 

 scious mind. Suppose that several conscious states are organized, 

 that they interpenetrate and become richer in content. They thus 

 might give anyone ignorant of space the feeHng of duration. But the 

 use of the word "several" shows that these states were isolated, set 

 side by side; in other words, we are compelled even by language to set 

 forth time in the terms of space. 



It is chiefly through motion that duration assumes the form of a 



homogeneous medium, and that time is projected into space. But 



even if we leave out motion, any repetition of an external phenomenon 



would suggest the same mode of representation: for instance, the 



series of blows of a hammer instead of being a progress becomes 



cut up into phases which are identical, and "this multiplicity of 



elements no longer being conceivable except by being set out in space 



(since they have now become identical), we are necessarily led to the 



idea of a homogeneous time, the symbohcal image of pure duration." 



Our ego comes in contact with the external world at its 

 Sensations Are ^ • • , • ,. , 



Closely Akin to Surface ; our sensations retam somethmg of the mutual 



the External externality, and in this way our superficial psychic life 



World and comes to be represented as set out in a homogeneous 



Nature medium. But there is a deeper self which forms one 



and the same person with the superficial ego, and the 



two endure in the same way. If we ehminate the superficial self, we 



can no longer perceive a homogeneous time, or measure duration, but 



