The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)

[558] It would be rash to say definitely just how many seconds long this specious present must needs be, for processes fade 'asymptotically,' and the distinctly intuited present merges into a penumbra of mere dim recency before it turns into the past which is simply reproduced and conceived. Many a thing which we do not distinctly date by intercalating it in a place between two other things will, nevertheless, come to us with this feeling of belonging to a near past. This sense of recency is a feeling sui generis, and may affect things that happened hours ago. It would seem to show that their brain-processes are still in a state modified by the foregoing excitement, still in a 'fading' phase, in spite of the long interval.

[559] Physiol. Psych, ii, 263.

[560] I leave my text as it was printed before Münsterberg's essay appeared (see Footnote 542, above). He denies that we measure any but minimal durations by the amount of fading in the ideational processes, and talks almost exclusively of our feelings of muscular tension in his account, whereas I have made no mention of such things in mine. I cannot, however, see that there is any conflict between what he and I suggest. I am mainly concerned with the consciousness of duration regarded as a specific sort of object, he is concerned with this object's measurement exclusively. Feelings of tension might be the means of the measurement, whilst overlapping processes of any and every kind gave the object to be measured. The accommodative and respiratory movements from which the feelings of tension come form regularly recurring sensations divided by their 'phases' into intervals as definite as those by which a yardstick is divided by the marks upon its length.

Let a1, a2, a3, a4, be homologous phases in four successive movements of this kind. If four outer stimuli 1, 2, 3, 4, coincide each with one of these successive phases, then their 'distances apart' are felt as equal, otherwise not. But there is no reason whatever to suppose that the mere overlapping of the brain-process of 2 by the fading process of 1, or that of 3 by that of 2, etc., does not give the characteristic quality of content which we call 'distance apart' in this experience, and which by aid of the muscular feelings gets judged to be equal. Doubtless the muscular feelings can give us the object 'time' as well as its measure, because their earlier phases leave fading sensations which constantly overlap the vivid sensation of the present phase. But it would be contrary to analogy to suppose that they should be the only experiences which give this object. I do not understand Herr Münsterberg to claim this for them. He takes our sense of time for granted, and only discusses its measurement.

[561] Exner in Hermann's Hdbch. d. Physiol., Bd. ii, Thl. ii, p. 281. Richet in Revue Philosophique, xxi, 568 (juin, 1886). See the next chapter, pp. 642-646.

[562] I have spoken of fading brain-processes alone, but only for simplicity's sake. Dawning processes probably play as important a part in giving the feeling of duration to the specious present.

[563] Reden (St. Petersburg, 1864), vol. i, pp. 255-268.

[564] Psychology, § 91.

[565] "The patient cannot retain the image of an object more than a moment. His memory is as short for sounds, letters, figures, and printed words. If we cover a written or printed word with a sheet of paper in which a little window has been cut, so that only the first letter is visible through the window, he pronounces this letter. If, then, the sheet is moved so as to cover the first letter and make the second one visible, he pronounces the second, but forgets the first, and cannot pronounce the first and second together." And so forth to the end. "If he closes his eyes and draws his finger exploringly over a well-known object like a knife or key, he cannot combine the separate impressions and recognize the object. But if it is put into his hand so that he can simultaneously touch it with several fingers, he names it without difficulty. This patient has thus lost the capacity for grouping successive ... impressions ... into a whole and perceiving them as a whole." (Grashey, in Archiv für Psychiatrie, Bd. xvi, pp. 672-673.) It is hard to believe that in such a patient the time intuited was not clipped off like the impressions it held, though perhaps not so much of it.

I have myself often noted a curious exaggeration of time-perspective at the moment of a falling asleep. A person will be moving or doing something in the room, and a certain stage of his act (whatever it may be) will be my last waking perception. Then a subsequent stage will wake me to a new perception. The two stages of the act will not be more than a few seconds apart; and yet it always seems to me as if, between the earlier and the later one, a long interval has passed away. I conjecturally account for the phenomenon thus, calling the two stages of the act a and b respectively: Were I awake, a would leave a fading process in my sensorium which would overlap the process of b when the latter came, and both would then appear in the same specious present, a belonging to its earlier end. But the sudden advent of the brain-change called sleep extinguishes a's fading process abruptly. When b then comes and wakes me, a comes back, it is true, but not as belonging to the specious present. It has to be specially revoked in memory. This mode of revocation usually characterizes long-past things—whence the illusion.

[566] Again I omit the future, merely for simplicity's sake.