626 PSYCHOLOGY. 



So much for the apparent shortening of tracts of time in 

 retrospect. Tliey shorten in passing whenever we are so 

 fulh' occupied M'ith their content as not to note the actual 

 time itself. A day full of excitement, with no pause, is said 

 to pass 'ere we know it.' On the contrary, a day full of 

 waiting, of unsatisfied desire for change, will seem a small 

 eternity. Tcediiim, ennui, Langweile, boredom, are words for 

 which, probably, every language known to man has its 

 equivalent. It comes about whenever, from the relative 

 emptiness of content of a tract of time, we grow attentive 

 to the passage of the time itself. Expecting, and being 

 ready for, a new impression to succeed ; when it fails to 

 come, we get an empty time instead of it ; and such experi- 

 ences, ceaselessly ;^enewed, make us most formidably aware 

 of the extent of the mere time itself.* Close your eyes and 

 simply wait to hear somebody tell you that a minute has 

 elapsed. The full length of your leisure with it seems in- 

 credible. You engulf yourself into its bowels as into those 

 of that interminable first week of an ocean voyage, and find 

 yourself wondering that history can have overcome many 

 such periods in its course. All because you attend so 

 closely to the mere feeling of the time per se, and because 

 your attention to that is susceptible of such fine-grained 

 successive subdi\dsion. The odiousness of the whole expe- 

 rience comes from its insipidity ; for stimulation is the indis- 

 pensable requisite for pleasure in an experience, and the 

 feeling of bare time is the least stimulating experience we 

 can have.f The sensation of tsedium is a protest, says 

 Volkmann, against the entire present. 



* "Empty lime is most strongly perceived when it comes as a pause in 

 music or in speech. Suppose a preacher in the pulpit, a professor at his 

 desk, to stick still in the midst of his discourse; or let a composer (as is 

 sometimes purposely done) make all his instruments stop at once; we await 

 every instant the resumption of the performance, and, in this awaiting, per- 

 ceive, more than in any other possible way, the empty time. To change 

 the example, let, in a piece of polyphonic music — a figure, for instance, in 

 which a tangle of melodies are under way — suddenly a single voice be 

 heard, which sustains a long note, while all else is hushed. . . . This one 

 note will appear very protracted — why? Because we expect to hear accom- 

 panying it the notes of the other in.struments, but they fail to come." 

 (Herbart: Psychol, als W. , §115.) — Compare also Miinsterberg, BeitrSge, 

 Heft 2, p. 41. 



t A night of pain will seem terribly long; we keep looking forward to 



