THE PERCEPTION OF TIME. 629 



additional fact requiring its own special elucidation^ wliicli this 

 talk about outer time-relations stamping copies of them- 

 selves within, leaves all untouched. 



I have shown, at the outset of the article, that what is 

 past, to be known as past, must be known luith what is 

 present, and during the 'present' spot of time. As the 

 clear understanding of this point has some importance, let 

 me, at the risk of repetition, recur to it again. Yolkmann 

 has expressed the matter admirably, as follows : 



"One might be tempted to answer the question of the origin of the 

 time-idea by simply pointing to the train of ideas, whose various mem- 

 bers, starting from the first, successively attain to full clearness. But 

 against this it must be objected that the successive ideas are not yet 

 the idea of succession, because succession in thought is not the thought 

 of succession. If idea A follows idea B, consciousness simply exchanges 

 one for another. That B comes after A is for our consciousness a non- 

 existent fact; for this after is given neither in B nor in A ; and no 

 third idea has been supposed. The thinking of the sequence of B upon 

 A is anotft'er kind of thinking from that which brought forth A and 

 then brought forth B ; and this first kind of thinking is absent so long 

 as merely the thinking of A and the thinking of B are there. In short, 

 when we look at the matter sharply, we come to this antithesis, that if 

 A and B are to be represented as occurring in succession they must be 

 siimdtaneously represented ; if we are to think c*^ them as one after the 

 other, we must think them both at once." * 



If we represent the actual ^time-stream of our thinking 

 by an horizontal line, the thought of the stream or of any 

 segment of its length, past, present, or to come, might be 

 figured in a perpendicular raised upon the horizontal at a 

 certain point. The length of this perpendicular stands for 

 a certain object or content, which in this case is the time 

 thought of, and all of which is thought of together at the 

 actual moment of the stream upon which the perpendicular 

 is raised. Mr. James Ward puts the matter very well in 

 his masterly article ' Psychology ' in the ninth edition of 

 the Encyclopaedia Britannica, I3age 64. He says : 



"We may, if we represent succession as a line, represent simuU 

 taneity as a second line at right angles to the first; empty time — or 

 time-length without time Vjreadth, we may say — is a mere abstraction. 

 Now, it is with the former line that wo have, to do in treating of time 



* Lehrbuch d. Psych. , § 87. Compare also H. Lotze, Metaphysik, § 154 



