630 PSYCHOLOGY. 



as it IS, and with the hitter in tiv.itiiig of our intuition ol time, wiiere, 

 just as in a perspective representation of distanee, we are confined to 

 lines in a plane at right angles to the actual line of depth. In a succes- 

 sion of events, say of sense-impressions, A B C D E . . . , the presence 

 of B means the absence of A and C, but the presentation of this succes- 

 sion involves the simultaneous presence in some mode or other of two 

 or more of the presentations A B C D. In reality, past, present, and 

 future arc differences in time, but in presentation all that corresponds 

 to these dift'erences is :n consciousness simultaneously." 



There is thus a sort of perspective projection of past ob- 

 jects upon present cousciousuess, similar to that of wide 

 landscapes upon a camera-screen. 



And since we saw a wdiile ago that our maximum dis- 

 tinct intuition of duration hardly covers more than a dozen 

 seconds (while our maximum vague intuition is probably 

 not more than that of a minute or so), we must suppose that 

 this amount of duration is pictured fairly steadily in each 

 passing instant of consciousness by virtue of some fairly con- 

 stant feature in the brain-process to which, the conscious- 

 ness is tied. This feature of the hrain-process, ivhatever it be, 

 w,ust be the cause of our perceiving the fact of time at all.* The 

 •duration thus steadily perceived is hardly more than the 

 'specious present,' as it was called a few pages back. Its 

 content is in a constant flux, events dawning into its forward 

 end as fast as they fade out of its rearward one, and each 

 of them changing its time-coefficient from 'not yet,' or 'not 

 quite yet,' to ' just gone ' or ' gone,' as it passes by. Mean- 

 while, the specious present, the intuited duration, stands 

 permanent, like the rainbow on the waterfall, with its own 

 quality unchanged by the events that stream through it. 

 Each of these, as it slips out, retains the power of being 

 reproduced ; and when reproduced, is reproduced with the 

 duration and neighbors which it originally had. Please 

 observe, hoAvever, that the reproduction of an event, after 

 it has once completely dropped out of the rearward end of 

 the specious present, is an entirely different psychic fact 

 from its direct perception in the specious present as a thing 

 immediatel}' past. A creature might be entirely devoid of 

 reproductive memory, and jet have the time-sense ; but the 



* The cause of the perceiving, not the object perceived ! 



