632 PSYCHOLOGY. 



TO WHAT CEREBRAL PROCESS IS THE SENSE OP TIME DUEf 



Nolo, to ivhat element in the hrain-process may this sensibil' 

 ity he due ? It cannot, as we have seen, be due to the mere 

 duration itself of the process ; it must be due to an element 

 present at every moment of the process, and this element 

 must bear the same inscrutable sort of relation to its cor- 

 relative feeling which all other elements of neural activity 

 bear to their j)sychic products, be the latter what they 

 may. Several suggestions have been made as to what the 

 element is in the case of time. Treating of them in a 

 note, * I will try to express briefly the only conclusion which 



* Most of these explanations simply give the signs wLich, adhering to 

 impressions, lead us to date them within a duration, or, in other words, to 

 assign to them their order. Why it should be a ime-order, however, is 

 not explained. Herbart's would-be explanation is a simple description of 

 time-perception. He says it comes when, with the last member of a series 

 present to our consciousness, we also think of the first; and then the whole 

 series revives in our thought at once, but with strength diminishing in the 

 backward direction (Psychol, als Wiss., § 115; Lehrb. zur Psychol., §§ 171, 

 173, 175). Similarly Drobisch, who adds that the series must appear as one 

 already elapsed {durchlaufene), a word which shows even more clearly the 

 question-begging nature of this sort of account (Empirische Psychol., § 59). 

 Th. Waitz is guilty of similar question-begging when he explains our time- 

 consciousness to be engendered by a set of unsuccessful attempts to make 

 our percepts agree with our expectations (Lehrb. d. Psychol., § 52). Volk- 

 manu's mythological account of past representations striving to drive pres- 

 ent ones out of the seat of consciousness, being driven hack by them, etc., 

 suffers from the same fallacy (Psychol., § 87). But all such accounts agree 

 in implying one fact — viz. , that the brain-processes of various events must 

 be active simultaneously, and in varying strength, for a time-perception to 

 be possible. Later authors have made this idea more precise. Thus, Lipps: 

 " Sensations arise, occupy con.sciousness, fade into images, and vanish. 

 According as two of them, a and h, go through this process simultaneously, 

 or as one precedes or follows the other, the phases of tlteir fading will agree 

 or differ; and the difference will be proportional to the time-difference 

 between their several moments of beginning. Thus there are differences 

 of quality in the images, which the mind may translate into corresponding 

 •differences of their temporal order. There is no other possible middle 

 term between the objective time- relations and those in the mind than these 

 differences of phase." (Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebeus, p. 588.) Lipps 

 accordingly calls them ' temporal signs,' and hastens explicitly to add that 

 the soul's translation of their order of strength into a time-order is entirely 

 inexplicable (p. 591). M. Guyau's account (Revue Philosophique, xix. 353) 

 hardly differs from that of his predecessors, except in picturesqueness of 

 style. Every change leaves a series of trainees lumineuses in the mind like 



