Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/238

 224 M. W. CALKINS : the irreversible nature of their necessary connexion, and must be misunderstood by those who fail to include the realisation of inner relation as a factor of the time-conscious- ness. When once, however, this truth is firmly held, then it is impossible to dispute about the primariness of either past or present as original time-datum, 1 for it has become evident that one cannot know the past at all, except as related to the present, nor the present unrelated to the past. The true doctrine of the nature of the psychical present opposes also the theory that duration is an element of the time-consciousness either " das elementare, nicht weiter reducirbare, Zeiterlebniss," 2 or one among the elementary attributes of the time-consciousness. 3 For, as these state- ments suggest, duration is regarded as a temporal element only when it is virtually identified with ' the present '. But the present is a temporal moment, and is therefore to be de- fined as ' one of a connected succession ' which obviously is not the meaning of ' duration '. The awareness of permanence or duration though unquestionably a factor of consciousness is therefore not temporal at all. This refusal to treat duration as a factor of the time- consciousness is not, of course, a denial that the elements of the consciousness of time, like all phenomena, psychical and physical, may be said to ' have duration '. Not only temporal position but a certain appreciable persistence are involved, By definition, in the phenomenon or fact, whether elemental or concrete. But the ' attribute duration ' belongs to the phenomenon from the realistic standpoint of the observing scientist and is not a part of the psychic content at all. The consciousness of temporal position and the consciousness of duration may be added to sensation complexes and so may form parts of psychic contents, but neither is a necessary element. 4 1 Cf. James, op. cit., L, p. 605, where he seems to make the original time- datum the ' past,' while Strong, Psychol. Review, iii., p. 150, identifies it with the ' present ' in the words, " The past means that which once was present ; and the future that which will be present ". 2 Meumann (paraphrasing Nicholls) Wundt's Philos. Stud., viii., p. 503. 3 Cf. Wundt, Kiilpe, Titchener, Ward : also Stern, Zeilschr.f. Psych, u. Phys., xiii., p. 332. 4 This consideration suggests a criticism upon the ordinary procedure of co-ordinating duration with quality, extent and intensity, as attri- bute of sensation. For duration, as has been shown, is an attribute only from a realistic and reflective point of view, whereas intensity and extent, as well as quality, are sensational in their nature.