t22 psvcHOLoar. 



But a movement is a change, a process ; so we see that in 

 the time-workl and the space-worhl alike the first known 

 things are not elements, but combinations, not separate 

 units, but wholes already formed. The condition of being 

 of the wholes may be the elements ; but the condition of 

 our knowing the elements is our having already felt the 

 wholes as wholes. 



In the experience of watching empty time flow — 'empty' 

 to be taken hereafter in the relative sense just set forth — 

 we tell it off in pulses. We say * now ! now ! now ! ' or we 

 count ' more ! more ! more ! ' as we feel it bud. This com- 

 position out of units of duration is called the law of time's 

 discrete flow. The discreteness is, however, merely due to 

 the fact that our successive acts of recognition or appercep- 

 tion of luTiat it is are discrete. The sensation is as continu- 

 ous as 'Any sensation can be. All continuous sensations are 

 named in beats. We notice that a certain finite ' more ' of 

 them is passing or already past. To adopt Hodgson's 

 image, the sensation is the measuring-tape, the perception 

 the dividing-engine which stamps its length. As we listen 

 to a stead}^ sound, we take it in in discrete pulses of recog- 

 nition, calling it successively 'the same! the same! the 

 same I ' The case stands no otherwise Avith time. 



After a small number of beats our impression of the 

 amount we have told off becomes quite vague. Our only 

 way of knowing it accurately is by counting, or noticing the 

 clock, or through some other sj^mbolic conception.* When 

 the times exceed hours or days, the conception is absolutely 

 symbolic. We think of the amount we mean either solely 

 as a name, or by running over a few salient dates therein, 

 with no pretence of imagining the full durations that lie 

 between them. No one has anything like a perception of the 

 greater length of the time between now and the first century 

 than of that between now and the tenth. To an historian, 



* " A.ny one wishing yet further examples of this mental substitution 

 will find one on observing bow liabitually he thinks of tlie spaces on the 

 clock-face instead of the periods they stand for; how, on discovering it to 

 be half an hour later than he supposed, he does not represent the half hour 

 in its duration, but scarcely passes beyond the sign of it marked by the 

 finger." (U. Spencer: Psychology, §336.) 



