Present, past, and future.

of BC .. on the recurrence of A, i.e., provided the memory-train continues so far intact. Such expectation, at first perhaps slight-a mere tendency easily overbornebecomes strengthened by every repetition of the series in the old order, till eventually, if often fulfilled and never falsified, it becomes certain and, as we commonly say, irresistible. To have a clear case of expectation, then, it is not necessary that we should distinctly remember any previous experience like it, but only that we should have actually present some earlier member of a series which has been firmly associated by such previous experiences, the remaining members, or at least the next, if they continue serial, being revived through that which is once again realized. This expectation may be instantly checked by reflexion, just as it may of course be disappointed in fact; but these are matters which do not concern the inquiry as to the nature of expectation while expectation lasts.

We shall continue this inquiry to most advantage by now widening it into an examination of the distinction of present, past, and future. To a being whose presentations never passed through the transitions which ours undergo first divested of the strength and vividness of impressions, again reinvested with them and brought back from the faint world of ideas-the sharp contrasts of "now" and "then," and all the manifold emotions they occasion, would be quite unknown. Even we, so far as we confine our activity and attention to ideas, are almost without them. Time-order, succession, antecedence and consequence, of course, there might be still, but in that sense of events as

Let us

"past and gone for ever," which is one of the melancholy
factors in our life; and in the obligation to wait and work
in hope or dread of what is "still to come" there is much
more than time-order. It is to presentations in their
primary stage, to impressions, that we owe what real differ-
ence we find between now and then, whether prospective
or retrospective, as it is to them also that we directly owe
our sense of the real, of what is and exists as opposed to
the non-existent that is not. But the present alone and life
in a succession of presents, or, in other words, continuous
occupation with impressions, give us no knowledge of the
present as present. This we first obtain when our present
consciousness consists partly of memories or partly of ex-
pectations as well. An event expected differs from a like
event remembered chiefly in two ways-in its relation to
present impressions and images and in the active attitude to
which it leads. The diverse feelings that accompany our
intuitions of time and contribute so largely to their colour-
ing are mainly consequences of these differences.
take a series of simple and familiar events ABCDE, re-
presenting ideas by small letters and perceptions by capitals
whenever it is necessary to distinguish them. Such series
may be present in consciousness in such wise that a bed are
imaged while E is perceived anew, i.e., the whole symbolized
as proposed would be abcd E; such would be, e.g., the state
of a dog which had just finished his daily meal. Again,
there may be a fresh impression of 4 which revives bede;
we should have then (1) Abcde—the state of our dog when
he next day gets sight of the dish in which his food is
brought to him. A little later we may have (2) a b Cde.
Here ab are either after-sensations or primary memory-
images, or have at any rate the increased intensity due to
recent impression; but this increased intensity will be
rapidly on the wane even while C lasts, and ab will pale
still further when C gives place to D, and we have (3)
abc De. But, returning to (2), we should find de to be in-
creasing in intensity and definiteness, as compared with
their state in (1), now that C, instead of 4, is the present
impression. For, when A occupied this position, not only
was e raised less prominently above the threshold of con-
sciousness by reason of its greater distance from A in the

memory-continuum, but, owing to the reduplications of this continuum, more lines of possible revival were opened up, to be successively negatived as B succeeded to A and C to B; even dogs know that "there is many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip." But, where A B C D E is a series of percepts such as we have here supposed-and a series of simpler states would hardly afford much ground for the distinctions of past, present, and future-there would be a varying amount of active adjustment of sense-organs and other movements supplementary to full sensation. In (2), the point at which we have ab C de, for instance, such adjustments and movements as were appropriate to b would cease as B lapsed and be replaced by those appropriate to C. Again, as C succeeded to B, and d in consequence increased in intensity and definiteness, the movements adapted to the reception of D would become nascent, and so on. Thus, psychologically regarded, the distinction of past and future and what we might call the oneness of direction of time depend, as just described, (1) upon the continuous sinking of the primary memory-images on the one side, and the continuous rising of the ordinary images on the other side, of that member of a series of percepts then repeating which is actual at the moment; and (2) on the prevenient adjustments of attention, to which such words as "expect," "await," "anticipate," all testify by their etymology. These conditions in turn will be found to depend upon all that is implied in the formation of the memory-train and upon that recurrence of like series of impressions which we attribute to the "uniformity of nature." If we never had the same series of impressions twice, knowledge of time would be impossible, as indeed would knowledge of any sort.

This is perhaps the fittest point at which to inquire into Succes the character and origin of our knowledge of succession sion. and duration, so far, that is, as such an inquiry belongs to psychology. We have not to ask how time itself comes to be; but, assuming it to be, we ask how the individual comes to know it. Time is often figuratively represented as a line, and we may perhaps utilize this figure to make clear the relation of our intuition of time to what we call time itself. Time, then, we say, stretches backwards and forwards from the present moment. But the present, though a point of time, is still such that we can and do in that moment attend to a plurality of presentations to which we might otherwise have attended severally in successive moments.

Granting this implication of simultaneity and succession, we may, if we represent succession as a line, represent simultaneity as a second line at right angles to the first; empty time—or time-length without time-breadth, we may say is a mere abstraction. Now it is with the former line that we have to do in treating of time as it is, and with the latter in treating of our intuition of time, where, just as in a perspective representation of distance, we are confined to lines in a plane at right angles to the actual line of depth. In a succession the of events, say of sense-impressions, A B C DE. presence of B means the absence of A and of C, but the presentation of this succession involves the simultaneous presence, in some mode or other, of two or more of the presentations ABC D. In presentation, as we have seen, all that corresponds to the differences of past, present, and future is in consciousness simultaneously. This truism —or paradox—that all we know of succession is but an interpretation of what is really simultaneous or coexistent, we may then concisely express by saying that we are aware of time only through time-perspective, and experience shows that it is a long step from a succession of

presentations to such presentation of succession. The first condition is that we should have represented together presentations that were in the first instance attended to

successively, and this we have both in the persistence of | by the slow and monotonous recurrence of the same imprimary memory-images and in the simultaneous reproduc- pressions. Now these "feelings" of distraction and tedium tion of longer or shorter portions of the memory-train. owe their characteristic qualities to movements of attenIn a series thus secured there may be time-marks, though tion. In the first, attention is kept incessantly on the no time, and by these marks the series must be distin- move: before it is accommodated to A, it is disturbed by guished from other simultaneous series. To ask which is the suddenness, intensity, or novelty of B; in the second, first among a number of simultaneous presentations is it is kept all but stationary by the repeated presentation unmeaning; one might be logically prior to another, of the same impression. Such excess and defect of surbut in time they are together and priority is excluded. | prises make one realize a fact which in ordinary life is so Nevertheless after each distinct representation a, b, c, d obscure as to escape notice. But recent experiments have there probably follows, as we have supposed, some trace set this fact in a more striking light, and made clear what of that movement of attention of which we are aware in Locke had dimly before his mind in talking of a certain In passing from one presentation to another. In our present distance between the presentations of a waking man. reminiscences we have, it must be allowed, little direct estimating very short periods of time, of a second or less, proof of this interposition, though there is strong indirect indicated say by the beats of a metronome, it is found evidence of it in the tendency of the flow to follow the that there is a certain period for which the mean of a number of estimates is correct, while shorter periods are order in which the presentations were first attended to. With the movements themselves we are familiar enough, on the whole overestimated, and longer periods underThis we may perhaps take to be evidence of though the residua of such movements are not ordinarily estimated. conspicuous. These residua, then, are our temporal signs, the time occupied in accommodating or fixing attention. and, together with the representations connected by them, Whether the "point of indifference" is determined by the constitute the memory-continuum. But temporal signs rate of usual bodily movement, as Spencer asserts and alone will not furnish all the pictorial exactness of the Wundt conjectures, or conversely, is a question we need time-perspective. They give us only a fixed series; but not discuss just now. But, though the fixation of attenthe working of obliviscence, by insuring a progressive tion does of course really occupy time, it is probably not variation in intensity and distinctness as we pass from one in the first instance perceived as time, i.e., as continuous member of the series to the other, yields the effect which "protensity," to use a term of Hamilton's, but as intensity. we call time-distance. By themselves such variations Thus, if this supposition be true, there is an element in would leave us liable to confound more vivid repre- our concrete time-perceptions which has no place in our sentations in the distance with fainter ones nearer the abstract conception of time. In time conceived as physical there is no trace of intensity; in time psychically experipresent, but from this mistake the temporal signs save us; and, as a matter of fact, where the memory-train is enced duration is primarily an intensive magnitude, witness imperfect such mistakes continually occur. On the other the comparison of times when we are "bored" with others hand, where these variations are slight and imperceptible, when we are amused. It must have struck every one as though the memory-continuum preserves the order of strange who has reflected upon it that a period of time events intact, we have still no such distinct appreciation which seems long in retrospect such as an eventful exof comparative distance in time as we have nearer the cursion-should have appeared short in passing; while a present where these perspective effects are considerable. period, on the contrary, which in memory has dwindled to Duration. When in retrospect we note that a particular presenta- a wretched span seemed everlasting till it was gone. But, tion X has had a place in the field of consciousness, while if we consider that in retrospect length of time is reprea series of objects ABCD... have succeeded each other, sented primarily and chiefly by impressions that have surthen we may be said in observing this relation of the two vived, we have an explanation of one-half; and in the to perceive the duration of X. And it is in this way that intensity of the movements of attention we shall perhaps we do subjectively estimate longer periods of time. But find an explanation of the other. What tells in retrospect first, it is evident that we cannot apply this method to is the series a b c d e, &c. ; what tells in the present is the indefinitely short periods without passing beyond the intervening tatat, &c., or rather the original accommodaregion of distinct presentation; and, since the knowledge of tion of which these temporal signs are the residuum. For, duration implies a relation between distinguishable pre- as we have seen elsewhere, the intensity of a presentation sentations A B C D and X, the case is one in which the does not persist, so that in memory the residuum of the hypothesis of subconsciousness can hardly help any but most intense feeling of tedium may only be so many t's those who confound the fact of time with the knowledge in a memory-continuum whose surviving members are few of it. Secondly, if we are to compare different durations and uninteresting. But in the actual experience, say, of at all, it is not enough that one of them should last out a a wearisome sermon, when the expectation of release is series A B C D, and another a series L M N O; we also continually balked and attention forced back upon a want some sort of common measure of those series. Locke monotonous dribble of platitudes, the one impressive fact was awake to this point, though he expresses himself is the hearer's impatience. On the other hand, so long as vaguely (Essay, ii. 14, 9-12). He speaks of our ideas we are entertained, attention is never involuntary, and succeeding each other "at certain distances not much there is no continually deferred expectation. Just as we are said to walk with least effort when our pace accords unlike the images in the inside of a lantern turned round by the heat of a candle," and "guesses" that "this appear- with the rate of swing of our legs regarded as pendulums, ance of theirs in train varies not very much in a waking so in pastimes impressions succeed each other at the rate man." Now what is this "distance" that separates 4 at which attention can be most easily accommodated, and from B, B from C, and so on, and what means have we are such that we attend willingly. We are absorbed in of knowing that it is tolerably constant in waking life? the present without being unwillingly confined to it; not It is probably that the residuum of which we have called only is there no motive for retrospect or expectation, but a temporal sign; or, in other words, it is the movement of there is no feeling that the present endures. Each imattention from A to B. But we must endeavour here to pression lasts as long as it is interesting, but does not conget a more exact notion of this movement. Everybody tinue to monopolize the focus of consciousness till attention knows what it is to be distracted by a rapid succession of to it is fatiguing, because uninteresting. In such facts, then, varied impressions, and equally what it is to be wearied we seem to have proof that our perception of duration rests XX. 9

CAUSES

OF

sense, and ideas apart from sensations may prompt to muscular | stated, is too teleological to serve as a purely psychological
exertion. There is a further complication still: not only may either principle, and, as generally formulated and illustrated, it
sensations or ideas lead to either muscular or mental movements,
takes account of matters quite outside the psychologist's
but movements themselves, whether of mind or limb, may as mere
We are not now concerned to know why a bitter
presentations determine other movements of either kind. In this ken.
respect, however, movements and thoughts either in themselves or taste, e.g., is painful or the gratification of an appetite
through their sensational and ideational accompaniments may be pleasant, but what marks distinctive of all painful presenta-
regarded as pertaining to the receptive side of consciousness. With
tions the one has and the other lacks. From a biological
these provisos, then, the broad generalization may hold that re-
ceptive states lead through feeling to active states, and that standpoint it may be true enough that the final cause of
presentations that give neither pleasure nor pain meet with no sexual and parental feelings is the perpetuation of the
responsive action. But first the objection must be met that presenta- species; but this does not help us to ascertain what
tious that are in themselves purely indifferent lead continually to
common character they have as actual sources of feeling
very energetic action, often the promptest and most definite action.
To this there are two answers. First, on the higher levels of for the individual. From the biological standpoint even
the senile decadence and death of the individual may be
psychical life presentations in themselves indifferent are often in-
directly interesting as signs of, or as means to, other presentations shown to be advantageous to the race; but it would cer-
that are more directly interesting. It is enough for the present, tainly be odd to describe this as advantageous to the
therefore, if it be admitted that all such indifferent presentations
are without effect as often as they are not instrumental in furthering individual, so different are the two points of view. What
the realization of some desirable end. Secondly, a large class of we are in search of, although a generalization, has reference
movements, such as those called sensori-motor and ideo-motor, are to something much more concrete than conceptions like
initiated by presentations that are frequently, it must be allowed,
race or life, and does not require us to go beyond the con-
neither pleasurable nor painful. In all such cases, however, there
is probably only an apparent exception to the principle of subjective sciousness of the moment to such ulterior facts as they
selection. They may all be regarded as instances of another im- imply.
portant psychological principle which we have to deal with more
Were it possible it would be quite unnecessary to examine
fully by and by, viz., that voluntary actions, and especially those
in detail every variety of pleasurable and painful con-
that either only avert pain or are merely subsidiary to pleasure-sciousness in connexion with a general inquiry of this sort.
giving actions, tend at length, as the effect of habit in the individual
It will be best to enumerate at the outset the only cases
and of heredity in the race, to become "secondarily automatic,'
as it has been called. Such mechanical or instinctive dexterities that specially call for investigation. Feeling may arise
make possible a more efficient use of present energies in securing mainly from (1) single sensations or movements, including
pleasurable and interesting experiences, and, like the rings of former
in these what recent psychologists call their tone; or it may
growths in a tree, afford a basis for further advance, as old interests
be chiefly determined by (2) some combination or arrange-
pall and new ones present themselves. Here, again, it suffices for
our present purpose if it be granted that there is a fair presumption ment of these primary presentations,-hence what might
in favour of supposing all such movements to have been originally be styled the lower æsthetic feelings. We have thus
initiated by feeling, as certainly very many of them were.
Of the feeling itself that intervenes between these among primary presentations a more material and a more
sensory and motor presentations there is but little to be formal cause or ground of feeling. The mere representa-
tion of these sources of feeling involves nothing of moment:
said. The chief points have been already insisted upon,
the idea of a bright colour or a bitter taste has not definite-
viz., that it is not itself a presentation, but a purely sub-
ness or intensity enough to produce feeling; and the ideal
jective state, at once the effect of a change in receptive
presentation of a harmonious arrangement of sounds or
consciousness and the cause of a change in motor conscious-colours does not in itself differ essentially as regards the
hence its continual confusion either with the move-
ments, whether ideational or muscular, that are its
expres-
sion, or with the sensations or ideas that are its cause.
For feeling as such is, so to put it, matter of being rather
than of direct knowledge; and all that we know about it we
know from its antecedents or consequents in presentation.
Pure feeling, then, ranging solely between the opposite
extremes of pleasure and pain, we are naturally led to in-.9,
quire whether there is any corresponding contrast in the
causes of feeling on the one hand, and on the other in its
manifestations and effects. To begin with the first ques-
tion, which we may thus formulate: What, if any, are
the invariable differences characteristic of the presentations
or states of mind we respectively like and dislike; or, taking
account of the diverse sources of feeling-sensuous, aesthetic,
intellectual, active-is there anything that we can predicate
alike of all that are pleasurable and deny of all that are
painful, and vice versa? It is at once evident that at least
in presentations objectively regarded no such common
characters will be found; if we find them anywhere it
must be in some relation to the conscious subject, i.e., in
the fact of presentation itself. There is one important
truth concerning pleasures and pains that may occur at
once as an answer to our inquiry, and that is often ad-
vanced as such, viz., that whatever is pleasurable tends to
further and perfect life, and whatever is painful to disturb
or destroy it. The many seeming exceptions to this law
of self-conservation, as it has been called, probably all
admit of explanation in conformity with it, so as to leave
its substantial truth unimpeached. But this law, however

ness;

See Spencer, Data of Ethics, chaps. i.-iv.; G. H. Schneider, Freud und Leid des Menschengeschlechts, chap. i.

feeling it occasions from the actual presentation. When
we advance to the level at which there occur ideas more

complex and more highly representative-or re-representa-
tive, as Mr Spencer would say than any we have yet con-
sidered we can again distinguish between material and
formal grounds of feeling. To the first we might refer,
eg., (3) the egoistic, sympathetic, and religious feelings;
this class will probably require but brief notice. The
second, consisting of (4) the intellectual and (5) the higher
æsthetic feelings, is more important. There is a special
class of feelings, which might be distinguished from all
the preceding as refler, since they arise from the memory
or expectation of feelings; but in fact these are largely
involved in all the higher feelings, and this brief reference
to them will suffice; of such hope, fear, regret, are examples.

1. The quality and intensity as well as the duration Sensaand frequency of a sensation or movement all have to tions and do with determining to what feeling it gives rise. It movewill be best to leave the last two out of account for a time.

Apart from these, the pleasantness or painfulness of a
movement appears to depend solely upon its intensity,
that is to say, upon the amount of effort necessary to effect
it, in such wise that a certain amount of exertion is agree-
able and any excess disagreeable. Some sensations also,
such as light and sound, are agreeable if not too intense,
their pleasantness increasing with their intensity up to a
certain point, on nearing which the feeling rapidly changes
and becomes disagreeable or even painful. Other sensa-
tions, as bitter tastes, e.7., are naturally unpleasant, how-
ever faint, though we must allow the possibility of an
acquired liking for moderately bitter or pungent flavours.
But in every case such sensations produce unmistakable

ments.

manifestations of disgust, if at all intense. Sweet tastes, on the other hand, however intense, are pleasant to an unspoiled palate, though apt before long to become mawkish, like "sweetest honey, loathsome in his own deliciousness," as confectioners' apprentices are said soon to find. The painfulness of all painful sensations or movements increases with their intensity without any assignable maximum being reached.

A comparison of examples of this kind, which it would be tedious to describe more fully and which are indeed too familiar to need much description, seems to show (1) that, so far as feeling is determined by the intensity of a presentation, there is pleasure so long as attention can be adapted or accommodated to the presentation, and pain so soon as the intensity is too great for this; and (2) that, so far as feeling is determined by the quality of a presentation, those that are pleasurable enlarge the field of consciousness and introduce or agreeably increase in intensity certain organic sensations, while those that are painful contract the field of consciousness and introduce or disagree ably increase in intensity certain organic sensations. There are certain other hedonic effects due to quality the examination of which we must for the present defer. Meanwhile as to the first point it may be suggested, as at any rate a working hypothesis, that in itself any and every simple sensation or movement is pleasurable if there is attention forthcoming adequate to its intensity. In the earliest and simplest phases of life, in which the presentationcontinuum is but little differentiated, it is reasonable to suppose that variation in the intensity of presentation preponderates over changes in the quality of presentation, and that to the same extent feeling is determined by the former and not by the latter. And, whereas this dependence on intensity is invariable, there is no ground for supposing the quality of any primary presentation, when not of excessive intensity, to be invariably disagreeable; the changes above-mentioned in the hedonic effects of bitter tastes, sweet tastes, or the like tend rather to prove the contrary. This brings us to the second point, and it requires some elucidation. We need here to call to mind the continuity of our presentations and especially the existence of a background of organic sensations or somatic consciousness, as it is variously termed. By the time that qualitatively distinct presentations have been differentiated from this common basis it becomes possible for any of these, without having the intensity requisite to affect feeling directly, to change it indirectly by means of the systemic sensations accompanying them, or, in other words, by their tone. The physiological concomitants of these changes of somatic tone are largely reflex movements or equivalents of movements, such as alterations in circulatory, respiratory, and excretory processes. Such movements are psychologically movements no longer, and are rightly regarded as pertaining wholly to the sensory division of presentations. But originally it may have been otherwise. To us now, these organic reflexes seem but part and parcel of the special sensation whose tone they form, and which they accompany even when that sensation, so far as its But mere intensity goes, might be deemed indifferent. perhaps at first the special qualities that are now through out unpleasant may have been always presented with an excessive intensity that would be painful on this score alone, and the reflexes that at present pertain to them may then have been psychologically the expression of this pain.1 At any rate it is manifestly unfair to refuse either 1 In the lowly organisms that absorb food directly through the skin such bitter juices as exist naturally might at once produce very violent effects,-comparable, say, to scalding; and the reflexes then established may have been continued by natural selection so as to save from poisoning the higher organisms, whose absorbent surfaces are internal Some light is and only guarded in this way by the organ of taste.

to seek out the primitive effects of the sensations in ques-
tion and allow for the workings of heredity, or to reckon
The
this accompanying systemic feeling as part of them.
latter seems the readier and perhaps, too, the preferable
course. A word will now suffice to explain what is meant
by enlarging and contracting the field of consciousness
and agreeably increasing or decreasing certain elements
therein.

The difference in point is manifest on comparing the flow
of spirits, buoyancy, and animation which result from a
certain duration of pleasurable sensations with the lowness
or depression of spirits, the gloom and heaviness of heart,
apt to ensue from prolonged physical pain. Common
language, in fact, leaves us no choice but to describe these
contrasted states by figures which clearly imply that they
differ in the range and variety of the presentations that
make up consciousness, and in the quickness with which
these succeed each other.2 It is not merely that in hilarity
as contrasted with dejection the train of ideas takes a
wider sweep and shows greater liveliness, but as it were at
the back of this, on the lower level of purely sensory ex-
perience, certain organic sensations which are ordinarily
indifferent acquire a gentle intensity, which seems by flow-
ing over to quicken and expand the ideational stream, as
we see, for instance, in the effects of mountain air and
sunshine. Or, on the other hand, these sensations become
so violently intense as to drain off and ingulf all available
energy in one monotonous corroding care, an oppressive
weight which leaves no place for free movement, no life
or leisure to respond to what are wont to be pleasurable
solicitations.3

As regards the duration and the frequency of presenta-
tion, it is in general true that the hedonic effect soon
attains its maximum, and then, if pleasant, rapidly de-
clines, or even changes to its opposite. "Pains in like manner
decline, but more slowly, and without in the same sense
changing to pleasures. The like holds of too frequent repe-
tition. Physiological explanation of these facts, good as
far as it goes, is, of course, at once forthcoming: sensibility
is blunted, time is required for restoration, and so forth;
but at least we want the psychological equivalent of all
this. In one respect we find nothing materially new; so
far as continued presentation entails diminished intensity
we have nothing but diminished feeling as a consequence;
so far as its continued presentation entails satiety the train
of agreeable accompaniments ceases in which the pleasur-
able tone consisted. But in another way long duration
and frequent repetition produce indirectly certain charac-

thrown on questions of this kind by the very interesting experiments
of Dr Romanes; for a general account of these see his Jelly-fish,
Star-fish, and Sea-urchins, chap. ix.

2 This is one among many cases in which the study of a vocabulary
is full of instruction to the psychologist. The reader who will be at
the trouble to compare the parallel columns under the heading "Passive
Affections," in Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, will
find ample proof both of this general statement and of what is said
above in the text.

3 Observation and experiment show that the physical signs of pain in the higher animals consist in such changes as a lowered and weaker pulse, reduction of the surface temperature, quickened respiration, dilatation of the iris, and the like. And so far as can be ascertained

Il est

these effects are not altogether the emotional reaction to pain but in
large measure its actual accompaniments, the physical side of what
we have called its tone.
The following is a good description of these
general characteristics of feeling :-"En même temps, il se fait une
série de mouvements généraux de flexion, comme si l'animal voulait
se rendre plus petit, et offrir moins de surface à la douleur.
intéressant de remarquer que, pour l'homme comme pour tous les
animaux, on retrouve ces mêmes mouvements généraux de flexion et
d'extension répondant aux sentiments différents de plaisir et de la
douleur. Le plaisir répond à un mouvement d'épanouissement, de
dilatation, d'extension. Au contraire, dans la douleur, on se rapetisse,
on se referme sur soi; c'est un mouvement général de flexion" (C.
Richet, L'Homme et l'Intelligence: La Douleur, p. 9).