642 PSTCHOLOGT. 



Let me sum up, now, by saying that we are constantly con- 

 scious of a certain duration — the specious present — varying 

 in length from a few seconds to probably not more than a 

 minute, and that this duration (with its content perceived 

 as having one part earlier and the other part later) is the 

 original intuition of time. Longer times are conceived by 

 adding, rhorter ones by dividing, portions of this vaguely 

 bounded unit, and are habitually thought by us symboli- 

 call}^ Kant's notion of an intuition of objective time as an 

 infinite necessary continuum has nothing to support it. 

 The cause of the intuition which we really have cannot be 

 the duration of our brain-processes or our mental changes. 

 That duration is rather the object of the intuition which, 

 being realized at every moment of such duration, must be 

 due to a ^permanently present cause. This cause — probably 

 the simultaneous presence of brain-processes of different 

 phase — fluctuates ; and hence a certain range of variation 

 in the amount of the intuition, and in its subdivisibility, 

 accrues. 



