THE PERCEPTION OF TIME. 607 



consciousness witliout wliicli it could not be called a 

 stream.* 



* " What I find, wlieu I look at consciousness at all, is, that what I can- 

 not divest myself of, or not have in consciousness, if I have consciousness 

 at all, is a sequence of different feelings. . . . The simultaneous percep- 

 tion of both sub-feelings, whether as parts of a coexistence or of a sequence, 

 is the total feeling — the minimum of consciousness — and this minimum has 

 •duration. . . . Time-duration, however, is inseparable from the minimum, 

 notwithstanding that, in an isolated moment, we could not tell which part 

 of it came first, which last. . . . We do not require to know that the sub- 

 feelings come in sequence, first one, then the other; nor to know what 

 coming in sequence means. But we have, in any artificially isolated mini- 

 mum of consciousness, the rudiments of the perception of former and latter 

 in time, in the sub-feeling that grows fainter, and the sub-feeling that 

 grows stronger, and the change between them. . . . 



" 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 piesent 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 pi'esent. 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 



