THE PERCEPTION OF TIME. 619 



minute, and found that tliey very naturally fell into seven 

 categories, from * very slow ' to * very fast.' * Each category 

 of feeling included the intervals following each other within 

 a certain range of speed, and no others. This is a qualita- 

 tive, not a quantitative judgment — an aesthetic judgment, 

 in fact. The middle categor}-, of speed that was neutral, 

 or, as he calls it, ' adequate,' contained intervals that were 

 grouped about 0.62 second, and Vierordt says that this 

 made what one might almost call an agreeable time.f 



The feeling of time and accent in music, of rhythm, is 

 quite independent of that of melody. Tunes with marked 

 rhythm can be readily recognized when simply drummed 

 on the table with the finger-tips. 



"WE HAVE NO SENSE FOR EMPTY TIME. 



Although subdividing the time by beats of sensation 

 aids our accurate knowledge of the amount of it that 

 elapses, such subdivision does not seem at the first glance 

 essential to our perception of its flow. Let one sit with 

 closed eyes and, abstracting entirely from the outer world, 

 attend exclusively to the passage of time, like one who 

 wakes, as the poet says, " to hear time flowing in the middle 

 of the night, and all things moving to a day of doom." 

 There seems under such circumstances as these no variety 

 in the material content of our thought, and what we notice 

 appears, if anything, to be the j)ure series of durations 

 budding, as it were, and growing beneath our indrawn gaze. 

 Is this really so or not ? The question is important, for, 

 if the experience be what it roughly seems, we have a sort 

 of special sense for pure time — a sense to which emptj 

 duration is an adequate stimulus ; while if it be an illusion, 

 it must be that our perception of time's flight, in the expe- 

 riences quoted, is due to i\ie filling of the time, and to our 

 memory of a content which it had a moment j)revious, and 

 which we feel to agree or disagree with its content now. 



It takes but a small exertion of introspection to sh^-^ 



*The number of distinguishabk' differences of speed between these limits 

 is as, he takes eare to remark, very much larger than 7 (Der Zeitsinn, p. 

 137). 



t P. 19, §18, p. 112. 



