In the next two chapters I shall deal with what is sometimes called internal perception, or the perception of time, and of events as occupying a date therein, especially when the date is a past one, in which case the perception in question goes by the name of memory. To remember a thing as past, it is necessary that the notion of 'past' should be one of our 'ideas.' We shall see in the chapter on Memory that many things come to be thought by us as past, not because of any intrinsic quality of their own, but rather because they are associated with other things which for us signify pastness. But how do these things get their pastness? What is the original of our experience of pastness, from whence we get the meaning of the term? It is this question which the reader is invited to consider in the present chapter. We shall see that we have a constant feeling sui generis of pastness, to which every one of our experiences in turn falls a prey1. To think a thing as past is to think it amongst the objects or in the direction of the objects which at the present moment appear affected2 by this quality. This is the original of our notion of past time, upon which memory and history build their systems. And in this chapter we shall consider this immediate3 sense of time alone.
If the constitution of consciousness were that of a string of bead-like sensations and images, all separate,
"we never could have any knowledge except that of the present instant. The moment each of our sensations ceased it would be gone for ever; and we should be as if we had never been. . . . We should be wholly incapable4 of acquiring experience. . . . Even if our ideas were associated in trains, but only as they are in imagination, we should still be without the capacity of acquiring knowledge. One idea, upon this supposition, would follow another. But that would be all. Each of our successive states of consciousness, the moment it ceased, would be gone forever. Each of those momentary5 states would be our whole being."2
We might, nevertheless, under these circumstances, act in a rational way, provided the mechanism6 which produced our trains of images produced them in a rational order. We should make appropriate speeches, though unaware7 of any word except the one just on our lips; we should decide upon the right policy without ever a glimpse of the total grounds of our choice. Our consciousness would be like a glow-worm spark, illuminating8 the point it immediately covered, but leaving all beyond in total darkness. Whether a very highly developed practical life be possible under such conditions as these is more than doubtful; it is, however, conceivable.
I make the fanciful hypothesis merely to set off our real nature by the contrast. Our feelings are not thus contracted, and our consciousness never shrinks to the dimensions of a glow-worm spark. The knowledge of some other part of the stream, past or future, near or remote, is always mixed in with our knowledge of the present thing.
A simple sensation, as we shall hereafter see, is an abstraction, and all our concrete states of mind are representations of objects with some amount of complexity11. Part of the complexity is the echo of the objects just past, and, in a less degree, perhaps, the foretaste of those just to arrive. Objects fade out of consciousness slowly. If the present thought is of A B C D E F G, the next one will be of B C D E F G H, and the one after that of C D E F G H I -- the lingerings of the past dropping successively away, and the incomings of the future making up the loss. These lingerings of old objects, these incomings of new, are the germs of memory and expectation, the retrospective and the prospective13 sense of time. They give that continuity to consciousness without which it could not be called a stream.3
The Sensible Present Has Duration.
Let any one try, I will not say to arrest, but to notice or attend to, the present moment of time. One of the most
baffling experiences occurs. Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in
the instant of becoming. As a poet, quoted by Mr. Hodgson, says,
"Le moment où je parle est déjà loin de moi,"
and it is only as entering into the living and moving organization of a much wider tract10 of time that the strict present is apprehended15 at all. It is, in fact, an altogether ideal abstraction, not only never realized in sense, but probably never even conceived of by those unaccustomed to philosophic16 meditation17. Reflection leads us to the conclusion that it must exist, but that it does exist can never be a fact of our immediate experience. The only fact of our immediate experience is what Mr. E. R. Clay has well called 'the specious18 present.' His words deserve to be quoted in full:4
"The relation of experience to time has not been profoundly studied. Its objects are given as being of the present, but the part of time referred to by the datum19 is a very different thing from the conterminous of the past and future which philosophy denotes by the name Present. The present to which the datum refers is really a part of the past -- a recent past -- delusively20 given as being a time that intervenes between the past and the future. Let it be named the specious present, and let the past, that is given as being the past, be known as the obvious past. All the notes of a bar of a song seem to the listener to be contained in the present. All the changes of place of a meteor seem to the beholder21 to be contained in the present. At the instant of the termination of such series, no part of the time measured by them seems to be a past. Time, then, considered relatively22 to human apprehension23, consists of four parts, viz., the obvious past, the specious present, the real present, and the future. Omitting the specious present, it consists of three . . . nonentities24 -- the past, which does not exist, the future, which does not exist, and their conterminous, the present; the faculty25 from which it proceeds lies to us in the fiction of the specious present."
In short, the practically cognized present is no knife-edge, but a saddle-back, with a certain breadth of its own on which we sit perched, and from which we look in two directions into time. The unit of composition of our perception of time is a duration, with a bow and a stern, as it were -- a rearward -- and a forward-looking end.5 It is only as parts of this duration-block that the relation of succession of one end to the other is perceived. We do not first feel one end and then feel the other after it, and from the perception of the succession infer an interval27 of time between, but we seem to feel the interval of time as a whole, with its two ends embedded28 in it. The experience is from the outset a synthetic29 datum, not a simple one; and to sensible perception its elements are inseparable, although attention looking back may easily decompose30 the experience, and distinguish its beginning from its end.
When we come to study the perception of Space, we shall find it quite analogous31 to time in this regard. Date in time corresponds to position in space; and although we now mentally construct large spaces by mentally imagining remoter and remoter positions, just as we now construct great durations by mentally prolonging a series of successive dates, yet the original experience of both space and time is always of something already given as a unit, inside of which attention afterward32 discriminates33 parts in relation to each other. Without the parts already given as in a time and in a space, subsequent discrimination of them could hardly do more than perceive them as different from each other; it would have no motive34 for calling the difference temporal order in this instance and spatial35 position in that.
And just as in certain experiences we may be conscious of an extensive space full of objects, without locating each
of them distinctly therein; so, when many impressions follow in excessively rapid succession in time, although we may be distinctly aware that they occupy some duration, and are not simultaneous, we may be quite at a loss to tell which comes first and which last; or we may even invert36 their real order in our judgment37. In complicated reaction-time experiments, where signals and motions, and clicks of the apparatus38 come in exceedingly rapid order, one is at first much perplexed39 in deciding what the order is, yet of the fact of its occupancy of time we are never in doubt.
Accuracy of Our Estimate of Short Durations.
We must now proceed to an account of the facts of time-perception in detail as preliminary to our speculative40 conclusion. Many of the facts are matters of patient experimentation41, others of common experience.
First of all, we note a marked difference between the elementary sensations of duration and those of space. The former have a much narrower range; the time-sense may be called a myopic42 organ, in comparison with the eye, for example. The eye sees rods, acres, even miles, at a single glance, and these totals it can afterward subdivide43 into an almost infinite number of distinctly identified parts. The units of duration, on the other hand, which the time-sense is able to take in at a single stroke, are groups of a few seconds, and within these units very few subdivisions -- perhaps forty at most, as we shall presently see -- can be clearly discerned. The durations we have practically most to deal with -- minutes, hours, and days -- have to be symbolically44 conceived, and constructed by mental addition, after the fashion of those extents of hundreds of miles and upward, which in the field of space are beyond the range of most men's practical interests altogether. To 'realize' a quarter of a mile we need only look out of the window and feel its length by an act which, though it may in part result from organized associations, yet seems immediately performed. To realize an hour, we must count 'now! -- now! -- now! -- now! --' indefinitely. Each 'now' is the feeling of a separate bit of time, and the exact sum of the bits never makes a very clear impression on our mind.
How many bits can we clearly apprehend14 at once? Very few if they are long bits, more if they are extremely short, most if they come to us in compound groups, each including smaller bits of its own.
Hearing is the sense by which the subdivision of durations is most sharply made. Almost all the experimental work on the time-sense has been done by means of strokes of sound. How long a series of sounds, then, can we group in the mind so as not to confound it with a longer or a shorter series?
Our spontaneous tendency is to break up any monotonously46 given series of sounds into some sort of a rhythm. We involuntarily accentuate47 every second, or third, or fourth beat, or we break the series in still more intricate ways. Whenever we thus grasp the impressions in rhythmic48 form, we can identify a longer string of them without confusion.
Each variety of verse, for example, has its 'law'; and the recurrent stresses and sinkings make us feel with peculiar50 readiness the lack of a syllable51 or the presence of one too much. Divers52 verses may again be bound together in the form of a stanza53, and we may then say of another stanza, "Its second verse differs by so much from that of the first stanza," when but for the felt stanza-form the two differing verses would have come to us too separately to be compared at all. But these superposed systems of rhythm soon reach their limit. In music, as Wundt6 says, "while the measure may easily contain 12 changes of intensity54 of sound (as in 12/8 time), the rhythmical55 group may embrace 6 measures, and the period consist of 4, exceptionally of 5
[8?] groups."
Wundt and his pupil Dietze have both tried to determine experimentally the maximal extent of our immediate distinct consciousness for successive impressions.
Wundt found7 that twelve impressions could be distinguished56 clearly as a united cluster, provided they were caught in a certain rhythm by the mind, and succeeded each other at intervals57 not smaller than 0.3 and not larger than 0.5 of a second. This makes the total time distinctly apprehended to be equal to from 3.6 to 6 seconds.
Dietze8 gives larger figures. The most favorable intervals for clearly catching58 the strokes were when they came at from 0.3 second to 0.18 second apart. Forty strokes might then be remembered as a whole, and identified without error when repeated, provided the mind grasped them in five sub-groups of eight, or in eight sub-groups of five strokes each. When no grouping of the strokes beyond making couples of them by the attention was allowed -- and practically it was found impossible not to group them in at least this simplest of all ways --16 was the largest number that could be clearly apprehended as a whole.9 This would make 40 times 0.3 second, or 12 seconds, to be the maximum filled duration of which we can be both distinctly and immediately aware.
The maximum unfilled, or vacant duration, seems to lie within the same objective range. Estel and Mehner, also working in Wundt's laboratory, found it to vary from 5 or 6 to 12 seconds, and perhaps more. The differences seemed due to practice rather than to idiosyncrasy.10
These figures may be roughly taken to stand for the most important part of what, with Mr. Clay, we called, a few pages back, the specious present. The specious present has, in addition, a vaguely59 vanishing backward and forward fringe; but its nucleus60 is probably the dozen seconds or less that have just elapsed.
If these are the maximum, what, then, is the minimum amount of duration which we can distinctly feel?
The smallest figure experimentally ascertained61 was by Exner, who distinctly heard the doubleness of two successive clicks of a Savart's wheel, and of two successive snaps of an electric spark, when their interval was made as small as about 1/500 of a second.11
With the eye, perception is less delicate. Two sparks, made to fall beside each other in rapid succession on the centre of the retina, ceased to be recognized as successive by Exner when their interval fell below 0.044".12
Where, as here, the succeeding impressions are only two in number, we can easiest perceive the interval between them. President Hall, who experimented with a modified Savart's wheel, which gave clicks in varying number and at varying intervals, says:13
"In order that their discontinuity may be clearly perceived, four or even three clicks or beats must be farther apart than two need to be. When two are easily distinguished, three or four separated by the same interval . . . are often confidently pronounced to be two or three respectively. It would be well if observations were so directed as to ascertain62, at least up to ten or twenty, the increase [of interval] required by each additional click in a series for the sense of discontinuity to remain constant throughout."14
Where the first impression falls on one sense, and the second on another, the perception of the intervening time
tends to be less certain and delicate, and it makes a difference which impression comes first. Thus, Exner found15 the smallest perceptible interval to be, in seconds:
| From sight to touch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. | 0.071 |
| From touch to sight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 0.053 |
| From sight to hearing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 0.16 |
| From hearing to sight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | 0.06 |
| From one ear to another . . . . . . . . . . . | 0.064 |
The difference is at its minimum when the times themselves are very short. Exner,16 reacting as rapidly as possible with his foot, upon a signal seen by the eye (spark), noted64 all the reactions which seemed to him either slow or fast in the making. He thought thus that deviations65 of about 1/100 of a second either way from the average were correctly noticed by him at the time. The average was here 0.1840". Hall and Jastrow listened to the intervals between the clicks of their apparatus. Between two such equal intervals of 4.27" each, a middle interval was included, which might be made either shorter or longer than the extremes. "After the series had been heard two or even three times, no impression of the relative length of the middle interval would often exist, and only after hearing the fourth and last [repetition of the series] would the judgment incline to the plus or minus side. Inserting the variable between two invariable and like intervals greatly facilitated judgment, which between two unlike terms is far less accurate."17 Three observers in these experiments made no error when the middle interval varied66 1/60 from the extremes. When it varied 1/120, errors occurred, but were few, This would make the minimum absolute difference perceived as large as 0.355."
This minimum absolute difference, of course, increases as the times compared grow long. Attempts have been made to ascertain what ratio it bears to the times themselves. According to Fechner's 'Psychophysic Law' it ought always to bear the same ratio. Various observers, however, have found this not to be the case.18 On the contrary, very interesting oscillations in the accuracy of judgment and in the direction of the error -- oscillations dependent upon the absolute amount of the times compared -- have been noticed by all who have experimented with the question. Of these a brief account may be given.
In the first place, in every list of intervals experimented with there will be found what Vierordt calls an 'INDIFFERENCE-POINT;' that is to say, an interval which we judge with maximum accuracy, a time which we tend to estimate as neither longer or shorter than it really is, and away from which, in both directions, errors increase their size.19 This time varies from one observer to another, but its average is remarkably67 constant, as the following table shows.20
The times, noted by the ear, and the average indifference-points (given in seconds) were, for --
| Wundt . . . . | 0.72 |
| Kollert . . . . | 0.75 |
| Estel (probably) . . . . | 0.75 |
| Mehner . . . . | 0.71 |
| Stevens . . . . | 0.71 |
| Mach . . . . | 0.35 |
| Buccola (about) . . . . | 0.40 |
The odd thing about these figures is the recurrence68 they show in so many men of about three fourths of a second, as the interval of time most easy to catch and reproduce. Odder still, both Estel and Mehner found that multiples of this time were more accurately69 reproduced than the time-intervals of intermediary length;26 and Glass found a certain periodicity, with the constant increment70 of 1.25 sec., in his observations. There would seem thus to exist something like a periodic or rhythmic sharpening of our time-sense, of which the period differs somewhat from one observer to the next.
Our sense of time, like other senses, seems subject to the law of contrast. It appeared pretty plainly in Estel's observations that an interval sounded shorter if a long one had immediately preceded it, and longer when the opposite was the case.
Like other senses, too, our sense of time is sharpened by practice. Mehner ascribes almost all the discrepancies71 between other observers and himself to this cause alone.27
Tracks of time filled (with clicks of sound) seem longer than vacant ones of the same duration, when the latter does not exceed a second or two.28 This, which reminds one of what happens with spaces seen by the eye, becomes reversed when longer times are taken. It is, perhaps, in accordance with this law that a loud sound, limiting a short interval of time, makes it appear longer, a slight sound shorter. In comparing intervals marked out by sounds, we must take care to keep the sounds uniform.29
There is a certain emotional feeling accompanying the intervals of time, as is well known in music. The sense of haste goes with one measure of rapidity, that of delay with another; and these two feelings harmonize with different mental moods. Vierordt listened to series of strokes performed by a metronome at rates varying from 40 to 200 a minute, and found that they very naturally fell into seven categories, from 'very slow' to 'very fast.'30 Each category of feeling included the intervals following each other within a certain range of speed, and no others. This is a qualitative72, not a quantitative73 judgment -- an æsthetic judgment, in fact. The middle category, of speed that was neutral, or, as he calls it, 'adequate,' contained intervals that were grouped about 0.62 second, and Vierordt says that this made what one might almost call an agreeable time.31
The feeling of time and accent in music, of rhythm, is quite independent of that of melody. Tunes74 with marked rhythm can be readily recognized when simply drummed on the table with the finger-tips.
We Have No Sense for Empty Time.
Although subdividing75 the time by beats of sensation aids our accurate knowledge of the amount of it that elapses, such subdivision does not seem at the first glance essential to our perception of its flow. Let one sit with closed eyes and, abstracting entirely76 from the outer world, attend exclusively to the passage of time, like one who wakes, as the poet says, "to hear time flowing in the middle of the night, and all things moving to a day of doom77." There seems under such circumstances as these no variety in the material content of our thought, and what we notice appears, if anything, to be the pure series of durations budding, as it were, and growing beneath our indrawn gaze. Is this really so or not? The question is important, for, if the experience be what it roughly seems, we have a sort of special sense for pure time -- a sense to which empty duration is an adequate stimulus78; while if it be an illusion, it must be that our perception of time's flight, in the experiences quoted, is due to the filling of the time, and to our memory of a content which it had a moment previous, and which we feel to agree or disagree with its content now.
It takes but a small exertion79 of introspection to show that the latter alternative is the true one, and that we can no more intuit a duration than we can intuit an extension, devoid80 of all sensible content. Just as with closed eyes we perceive a dark visual field in which a curdling81 play of obscurest luminosity is always going on; so, be we never so abstracted from distinct outward impressions, we are always inwardly immersed in what Wundt has somewhere called the twilight82 of our general consciousness. Our heart-beats, our breathing, the pulses of our attention, fragments of words or sentences that pass through our imagination, are what people this dim habitat. Now, all these processes are rhythmical, and are apprehended by us, as they occur, in their totality; the breathing and pulses of attention, as coherent successions, each with its rise and fall; the heart-beats similarly, only relatively far more brief; the words not separately, but in connected groups. In short, empty our minds as we may, some form of changing process remains83 for us to feel, and cannot be expelled. And along with the sense of the process and its rhythm goes the sense of the length of time it lasts. Awareness84 of change is thus the condition on which our perception of time's flow depends; but there exists no reason to suppose that empty time's own changes are sufficient for the awareness of change to be aroused. The change must be of some concrete sort -- an outward or inward sensible series, or a process of attention or volition85.32
And here again we have an analogy with space. The earliest form of distinct space-perception is undoubtedly86 that of a movement over some one of our sensitive surfaces, and this movement is originally given as a simple whole of feeling, and is only decomposed87 into its elements -- successive positions successively occupied by the moving body -- when our education in discrimination is much advanced. But a movement is a change, a process; so we see that in the time-world and the space-world alike the first known things are not elements, but combinations, not separate units, but wholes already formed. The condition of being of the wholes may be the elements; but the condition of our knowing the elements is our having already felt the wholes as wholes.
In the experience of watching empty time flow -- 'empty' to be taken hereafter in the relative sense just set forth88 -- we tell it off in pulses. We say 'now! now! now!' or we count 'more! more! more!' as we feel it bud. This composition out of units of duration is called the law of time's discrete89 flow. The discreteness90 is, however, merely due to the fact that our successive acts of recognition or apperception of what it is are discrete. The sensation is as continuous as any sensation can be. All continuous sensations are named in beats. We notice that a certain finite 'more' of them is passing or already past. To adopt Hodgson's image, the sensation is the measuring-tape, the perception the dividing-engine which stamps its length. As we listen to a steady sound, we take it in in discrete pulses of recognition, calling it successively 'the same! the same! the same!' The case stands no otherwise with time.
After a small number of beats our impression of the amount we have told off becomes quite vague. Our only way of knowing it accurately is by counting, or noticing the clock, or through some other symbolic45 conception.33 When the times exceed hours or days, the conception is absolutely symbolic. We think of the amount we mean either solely91 as a name, or by running over a few salient dates therein, with no pretence92 of imagining the full durations that lie between them. No one has anything like a perception of the greater length of the time between now and the first century than of that between now and the tenth. To an historian, it is true, the longer interval will suggest a host of additional dates and events, and so appear a more multitudinous thing. And for the same reason most people will think they directly perceive the length of the past fortnight to exceed that of the past week. But there is properly no comparative time intuition in these cases at all. It is but dates and events, representing time; their abundance symbolizing93 its length. I am sure that this is so, even where the times compared are no more than an hour or so in length. It is the same with Spaces of many miles, which we always compare with each other by the numbers which measure them.34
From this we pass naturally to speak of certain familiar variations in our estimation of lengths of time. In general, a time filled with varied and interesting experiences seems short in passing, but long as we look back. On the other hand, a tract of time empty of experiences seems long in passing, but in retrospect12 short. A week of travel and sight-seeing may subtend an angle more like three weeks in the memory; and a month of sickness hardly yields more memories than a day. The length in retrospect depends obviously on the multitudinousness of the memories which the time affords. Many objects, events, changes, many subdivisions, immediately widen the view as we look back. Emptiness, monotony, familiarity, make it shrivel up. In Von Holtei's 'Vagabonds' one Anton is described as revisiting his native village.
"Seven years," he exclaims, "seven years since I ran away! More like seventy it seems, so much has happened. I cannot think of it all without becoming dizzy -- at any rate not now. And yet again, when I look at the village, at the church-tower, it seems as if I could hardly have been seven days away."
Prof. Lazarus35 (from whom I borrow this quotation), thus explains both of these contrasted illusions by our principle of the awakened94 memories being multitudinous or few:
"The circle of experiences, widely extended, rich in variety, which he had in view on the day of his leaving the village rises now in his mind as its image lies before him. And with it -- in rapid succession and violent motion, not in chronologic order, or from chronologic motives95, but suggesting each other by all sorts of connections -- arise massive images of all his rich vagabondage and roving life. They roll and wave confusedly together, first perhaps one from the first year, then from the sixth, soon from the second, again from the fifth, the first, etc., until it seems as if seventy years must have been there, and he reels with the fulness of his vision. . . . Then the inner eye turns away from all this past. The outer one turns to the village, especially to the church-tower. The sight of it calls back the old sight of it, so that the consciousness is filled with that alone, or almost alone. The one vision compares itself with the other, and looks so near, so unchanged, that it seems as if only a week of time could have come between."
The same space of time seems shorter as we grow older -- that is, the days, the months, and the years do so; whether the hours do so is doubtful, and the minutes and seconds to all appearance remain about the same.
"Whoever counts many lustra in his memory need only question himself to find that the last of these, the past five years, have sped much more quickly than the preceding periods of equal amount. Let any one remember his last eight or ten school years: it is the space of a century. Compare with them the last eight or ten years of life: it is the space of an hour."
So writes Prof. Paul Janet,36 and gives a solution which can hardly be said to diminish the mystery. There is a law, he says, by which the apparent length of an interval at a given epoch96 of a man's life is proportional to the total length of the life itself. A child of 10 feels a year as 1/10 of his whole life -- a man of 50 as 1/50, the whole life meanwhile apparently97 preserving a constant length. This formula roughly expresses the phenomena98, it is true, but cannot possibly be an elementary psychic99 law; and it is certain that, in great part at least, the foreshortening of the years as we grow older is due to the monotony of memory's content, and the consequent simplification of the backward-glancing view. In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective100 or objective, every hour of the day. Apprehension is vivid, retentiveness101 strong, and our recollections of that time, like those of a time spent in rapid and interesting travel, are of something intricate, multitudinous, and long-drawn-out. But as each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse102.
So much for the apparent shortening of tracts103 of time in retrospect. They shorten in passing whenever we are so fully104 occupied with their content as not to note the actual time itself. A day full of excitement, with no pause, is said to pass 'ere we know it.' On the contrary, a day full of waiting, of unsatisfied desire for change, will seem a small eternity105. Tædium, ennui106, Langweile, boredom107, are words for which, probably, every language known to man has its equivalent. It comes about whenever, from the relative emptiness of content of a tract of time, we grow attentive108 to the passage of the time itself. Expecting, and being ready for, a new impression to succeed; when it fails to come, we get an empty time instead of it; and such experiences, ceaselessly renewed, make us most formidably aware of the extent of the mere9 time itself.37 Close your eyes and simply wait to hear somebody tell you that a minute has elapsed. The full length of your leisure with it seems incredible. You engulf109 yourself into its bowels110 as into those of that interminable first week of an ocean voyage, and find yourself wondering that history can have overcome many such periods in its course. All because you attend so closely to the mere feeling of the time per se, and because your attention to that is susceptible111 of such fine-grained successive subdivision. The odiousness112 of the whole experience comes from its insipidity113; for stimulation114 is the indispensable requisite115 for pleasure in an experience, and the feeling of bare time is the least stimulating116 experience we can have.38 The sensation of tædium is a protest, says Volkmann, against the entire present.
Exactly parallel variations occur in our consciousness of space. A road we walk back over, hoping to find at each step an object we have dropped, seems to us longer than when we walked over it the other way. A space we measure by pacing appears longer than one we traverse with no thought of its length. And in general an amount of space attended to in itself leaves with us more impression of spaciousness117 than one of which we only note the content.39
I do not say that everything in these fluctuations118 of estimate can be accounted for by the time's content being crowded and interesting, or simple and tame. Both in the shortening of time by old age and in its lengthening119 by ennui some deeper cause may be at work. This cause can only be ascertained, if it exist, by finding out why we perceive time at all. To this inquiry120 let us, though without much hope, proceed.
The Feeling of Past Time is a Present Feeling.
If asked why we perceive the light of the sun, or the sound of an explosion, we reply, "Because certain outer forces, ether-waves or air-waves, smite121 upon the brain, awakening122 therein changes, to which the conscious perceptions, light and sound, respond." But we hasten to add that neither light nor sound copy or mirror the ether- or air-waves; they represent them only symbolically. The only case, says Helmholtz, in which such copying occurs, and in which
"our perceptions can truly correspond with outer reality, is that of the time-succession of phenomena. Simultaneity, succession, and the regular return of simultaneity or succession, can obtain as well in sensations as in outer events. Events, like our perceptions of them, take place in time, so that the time-relations of the latter can furnish a true copy of those of the former. The sensation of the thunder follows the sensation of the lightning just as the sonorous123 convulsing of the air by the electric discharge reaches the observer's place later than that of the luminiferous ether."40
One experiences an almost instinctive124 impulse, in pursuing such reflections as these, to follow them to a sort of crude speculative conclusion, and to think that he has at last got the mystery of cognition where, to use a vulgar phrase, 'the wool is short.' What more natural, we say, than that the sequences and durations of things should become known? The succession of the outer forces stamps itself as a like succession upon the brain. The brain's successive changes are copied exactly by correspondingly successive pulses of the mental stream. The mental stream, feeling itself, must feel the time-relations of its own states. But as these are copies of the outward time-relations, so must it know them too. That is to say, these latter time-relations arouse their own cognition; or, in other words, the mere existence of time in those changes out of the mind which affect the mind is a sufficient cause why time is perceived by the mind.
This philosophy is unfortunately too crude. Even though we were to conceive the outer successions as forces stamping their image on the brain, and the brain's successions as forces stamping their image on the mind,41 still, between the mind's own changes being successive, and knowing their own succession, lies as broad a chasm125 as between the object and subject of any case of cognition in the world. A succession of feelings, in and of itself, is not a feeling of succession. And since, to our successive feelings, a feeling of their own succession is added, that must be treated as an additional fact requiring its own special elucidation126, which this talk about outer time-relations stamping copies of themselves within, leaves all untouched.
I have shown, at the outset of the article, that what is past, to be known as past, must be known with what is present, and during the 'present' spot of time. As the clear understanding of this point has some importance, let me, at the risk of repetition, recur49 to it again. Volkmann has expressed the matter admirably, as follows:
"One might be tempted127 to answer the question of the origin of the time-idea by simply pointing to the train of ideas, whose various members, starting from the first, successively attain128 to full clearness. But against this it must be objected that the successive ideas are not yet the idea of succession, because succession in thought is not the thought of succession. If idea A follows idea B, consciousness simply exchanges one for another. That B comes after A is for our consciousness a non-existent fact; for this after is given neither in B nor in A; and no third idea has been supposed. The thinking of the sequence of B upon A is another kind of thinking from that which brought forth A and then brought forth B; and this first kind of thinking is absent so long as merely the thinking of A and the thinking of B are there. In short, when we look at the matter sharply, we come to this antithesis129, that if A and B are to be represented as occurring in succession they must be simultaneously130 represented; if we are to think of them as one after the other, we must think them both at once."42
If we represent the actual time-stream of our thinking by an horizontal line, the thought of the stream or of any segment of its length, past, present, or to come, might be figured in a perpendicular131 raised upon the horizontal at a certain point. The length of this perpendicular stands for a certain object or content, which in this case is the time thought of, and all of which is thought of together at the actual moment of the stream upon which the perpendicular is raised. Mr. James Ward26 puts the matter very well in his masterly article 'Psychology132' in the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, page 64. He says:
"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 of events, say of sense-impressions, A B C D E . . ., the presence of B means the absence of A and C, but the presentation of this succession involves the simultaneous presence in some mode or other of two or more of the presentations A B C D. In reality, past, present, and future are differences in time, but in presentation all that corresponds to these differences is in consciousness simultaneously."
There is thus a sort of perspective projection133 of past objects upon present consciousness, similar to that of wide landscapes upon a camera-screen.
And since we saw a while ago that our maximum distinct intuition of duration hardly covers more than a dozen seconds (while our maximum vague intuition is probably not more than that of a minute or so), we must suppose that this amount of duration is pictured fairly steadily134 in each passing instant of consciousness by virtue135 of some fairly constant feature in the brain-process to which the consciousness is tied. This feature of the brain-process, whatever it be, must be the cause of our perceiving the fact of time at all.43 The duration thus steadily perceived is hardly more than the 'specious present,' as it was called a few pages back. Its content is in a constant flux136, events dawning into its forward end as fast as they fade out of its rearward one, and each of them changing its time-coefficient from 'not yet,' or 'not quite yet,' to 'just gone' or 'gone,' as it passes by. Meanwhile, the specious present, the intuited duration, stands permanent, like the rainbow on the waterfall, with its own quality unchanged by the events that stream through it. Each of these, as it slips out, retains the power of being reproduced; and when reproduced, is reproduced with the duration and neighbors which it originally had. Please observe, however, that the reproduction of an event, after it has once completely dropped out of the rearward end of the specious present, is an entirely different psychic fact from its direct perception in the specious present as a thing immediately past. A creature might be entirely devoid of reproductive memory, and yet have the time-sense; but the latter would be limited, in his case, to the few seconds immediately passing by. Time older than that he would never recall. I assume reproduction in the text, because I am speaking of human beings who notoriously possess it. Thus memory gets strewn with dated things -- dated in the sense of being before or after each other.44 The date of a thing is a mere relation of before or after the present thing or some past or future thing. Some things we date simply by mentally tossing them into the past or future direction. So in space we think of England as simply to the eastward137, of Charleston as lying south. But, again, we may date an event exactly, by fitting it between two terms of a past or future series explicitly138 conceived, just as we may accurately think of England or Charleston being just so many miles away.45
The things and events thus vaguely or exactly dated become thenceforward those signs and symbols of longer time-spaces, of which we previously139 spoke140. According as we think of a multitude of them, or of few, so we imagine the time they represent to be long or short. But the original paragon141 and prototype of all conceived times is the specious present, the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly142 sensible.
To What Cerebral143 Process is the Sense of Time Due?
Now, to what element in the brain-process may this sensibility be 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 correlative feeling which all other elements of neural144 activity bear to their psychic 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,46 I will try to express briefly145 the only conclusion which seems to emerge from a study of them and of the facts -- unripe146 though that conclusion be.
The phenomena of 'summation147 of stimuli148' in the nervous system prove that each stimulus leaves some latent activity behind it which only gradually passes away. (See above, pp. 82-85.) Psychological proof of the same fact is afforded by those 'after-images' which we perceive when a sensorial stimulus is gone. We may read off peculiarities149 in an after-image, left by an object on the eye, which we failed to note in the original. We may 'hark back' and take in the meaning of a sound several seconds after it has ceased. Delay for a minute, however, and the echo itself of the clock or the question is mute; present sensations have banished150 it beyond recall. With the feeling of the present thing there must at all times mingle151 the fading echo of all those other things which the previous few seconds have supplied. Or, to state it in neural terms, there is at every moment a cumulation of brain-processes overlapping153 each other, of which the fainter ones are the dying phases of processes which but shortly previous were active in a maximal degree. The AMOUNT OF THE OVERLAPPING determines the feeling of the DURATION OCCUPIED. WHAT EVENTS shall appear to occupy the duration depends on just WHAT PROCESSES the overlapping processes are. We know so little of the intimate nature of the brain's activity that even where a sensation monotonously endures, we cannot say that the earlier moments of it do not leave fading processes behind which coexist with those of the present moment. Duration and events together form our intuition of the specious present with its content.47 Why such an intuition should result from such a combination of brain-processes I do not pretend to say. All I aim at is to state the most elemental form of the psycho-physical conjunction.
I have assumed that the brain-processes are sensational154 ones. Processes of active attention (see Mr. Ward's account in the long foot-note) will leave similar fading brain-processes behind. If the mental processes are conceptual, a complication is introduced of which I will in a moment speak. Meanwhile, still speaking of sensational processes, a remark of Wundt's will throw additional light on the account I give. As is known, Wundt and others have proved that every act of perception of a sensorial stimulus takes an appreciable155 time. When two different stimuli -- e.g. a sight and a sound -- are given at once or nearly at once, we have difficulty in attending to both, and may wrongly judge their interval, or even invert their order. Now, as the result of his experiments on such stimuli, Wundt lays down this law:48 that of the three possible determinations we may make of their order --
"namely, simultaneity, continuous transition, and discontinuous transition -- only the first and last are realized, never the second. Invariably, when we fail to perceive the impressions as simultaneous, we notice a shorter or longer empty time between them, which seems to correspond to the sinking of one of the ideas and to the rise of the other. . . . For our attention may share itself equally between the two impressions, which will then compose one total percept [and be simultaneously felt]; or it may be so adapted to one event as to cause it to be perceived immediately, and then the second event can be perceived only after a certain time of latency, during which the attention reaches its effective maximum for it and diminishes for the first event. In this case the events are perceived as two, and in successive order -- that is, as separated by a time-interval in which attention is not sufficiently156 accommodated to either to bring a distinct perception about. . . . While we are hurrying from one to the other, everything between them vanishes in the twilight of general consciousness."49
One might call this the law of discontinuous succession in time, of percepts to which we cannot easily attend at once. Each percept then requires a separate brain-process; and when one brain-process is at its maximum, the other would appear perforce to be in either a waning157 or a waxing phase. If our theory of the time-feeling be true, empty time must then subjectively158 appear to separate the two percepts, no matter how close together they may objectively be; for, according to that theory, the feeling of a time-duration is the immediate effect of such an overlapping of brain-processes of different phase -- wherever and from whatever cause it may occur.
To pass, now, to conceptual processes: Suppose I think of the Creation, then of the Christian159 era, then of the battle of Waterloo, all within a few seconds. These matters have their dates far outside the specious present. The processes by which I think them, however, all overlap152. What events, then, does the specious present seem to contain? Simply my successive acts of thinking these long-past things, not the long-past things themselves. As the instantly-present thought may be of a long-past thing, so the just-past thought may be of another long-past thing. When a long-past event is reproduced in memory and conceived with its date, the reproduction and conceiving traverse the specious present. The immediate content of the latter is thus all my direct experiences, whether subjective or objective. Some of these meanwhile may be representative of other experiences indefinitely remote.
The number of these direct experiences which the specious present and immediately-intuited past may embrace measures the extent of our 'primary,' as Exner calls it, or, as Richet calls it, of our 'elementary' memory.50 The sensation resultant from the overlapping is that of the duration which the experiences seem to fill. As is the number of any larger set of events to that of these experiences, so we suppose is the length of that duration to this duration. But of the longer duration we have no direct 'realizing sense.' The variations in our appreciation160 of the same amount of real time may possibly be explained by alterations161 in the rate of fading in the images, producing changes in the complication of superposed processes, to which changes changed states of consciousness may correspond. But however long we may conceive a space of time to be, the objective amount of it which is directly perceived at any one moment by us can never exceed the scope of our 'primary memory' at the moment in question.51
We have every reason to think that creatures may possibly differ enormously in the amounts of duration which they intuitively feel, and in the fineness of the events that may fill it. Von Bær has indulged52 in some interesting computations of the effect of such differences in changing the aspect of Nature. Suppose we were able, within the length of a second, to note 10,000 events distinctly, instead of barely 10, as now; if our life were then destined163 to hold the same number of impressions, it might be 1000 times as short. We should live less than a month, and personally know nothing of the change of seasons. If born in winter, we should believe in summer as we now believe in the heats of the Carboniferous era. The motions of organic beings would be so slow to our senses as to be inferred, not seen. The sun would stand still in the sky, the moon be almost free from change, and so on. But now reverse the hypothesis and suppose a being to get only one 1000th part of the sensations that we get in a given time, and consequently to live 1000 times as long. Winters and summers will be to him like quarters of an hour. Mushrooms and the swifter-growing plants will shoot into being so rapidly as to appear instantaneous creations; annual shrubs164 will rise and fall from the earth like restlessly boiling-water springs; the motions of animals will be as invisible as are to us the movements of bullets and cannon-balls; the sun will scour165 through the sky like a meteor, leaving a fiery166 trail behind him, etc. That such imaginary cases (barring the superhuman longevity) may be realized somewhere in the animal kingdom, it would be rash to deny.
"A gnat167's wings," says Mr Spencer,53 "make ten or fifteen thousand strokes a second. Each stroke implies a separate nervous action. Each such nervous action or change in a nervous centre is probably as appreciable by the gnat as is a quick movement of his arm by a man. And if this, or anything like this, is the fact, then the time occupied by a given external change, measured by many movements in the one case, must seem much longer than in the other case, when measured by one movement."
In hashish-intoxication there is a curious increase in the apparent time-perspective. We utter a sentence, and ere the end is reached the beginning seems already to date from indefinitely long ago. We enter a short street, and it is as if we should never get to the end of it. This alteration162 might conceivably result from an approach to the condition of Von Bær's and Spencer's short-lived beings. If our discrimination of successions became finer-grained, so that we noted ten stages in a process where previously we only noted one; and if at the same time the processes faded ten times as fast as before; we might have a specious present of the same subjective length as now, giving us the same time-feeling and containing as many distinguishable successive events, but out from the earlier end of it would have drooped168 nine tenths of the real events it now contains. They would have fallen into the general reservoir of merely dated memories, reproducible at will. The beginning of our sentences would have to be expressly recalled; each word would appear to pass through consciousness at a tenth of its usual speed. The condition would, in short, be exactly analogous to the enlargement of space by a microscope; fewer real things at once in the immediate field of view, but each of them taking up more than its normal room, and making the excluded ones seem unnaturally169 far away.
Under other conditions, processes seem to fade rapidly without the compensating170 increase in the subdivisibility of successions. Here the apparent length of the specious present contracts. Consciousness dwindles171 to a point, and loses all intuitive sense of the whence and whither of its path. Express acts of memory replace rapid bird's-eye views. In my own case, something like this occurs in extreme fatigue172. Long illnesses produce it. Occasionally, it appears to accompany aphasia173.54 It would be vain to seek to imagine the exact brain-change in any of these cases. But we must admit the possibility that to some extent the variations of time-estimate between youth and age, and excitement and ennui, are due to such causes, more immediate than to the one we assigned some time ago.
But whether our feeling of the time which immediately-past55 events have filled be of something long or of something short, it is not what it is because those events are past, but because they have left behind them processes which are present. To those processes, however caused, the mind would still respond by feeling a specious present, with one part of it just vanishing or vanished into the past. As the Creator is supposed to have made Adam with a navel -- sign of a birth which never occurred -- so He might instantaneously make a man with a brain in which were processes just like the 'fading' ones of an ordinary brain. The first real stimulus after creation would set up a process additional to these. The processes would overlap; and the new-created man would unquestionably have the feeling, at the very primal174 instant of his life, of having been in existence already some little space of time.
Let me sum up, now, by saying that we are constantly conscious 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, shorter ones by dividing, portions of this vaguely bounded unit, and are habitually175 thought by us symbolically. 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 permanently176 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, accrues177.
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prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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mechanism
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| n.机械装置；机构，结构 | |
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unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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illuminating
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| a.富于启发性的，有助阐明的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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tract
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| n.传单，小册子，大片(土地或森林) | |
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complexity
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| n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物 | |
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retrospect
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| n.回顾，追溯；v.回顾，回想，追溯 | |
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prospective
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| adj.预期的，未来的，前瞻性的 | |
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apprehend
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| vt.理解，领悟，逮捕，拘捕，忧虑 | |
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apprehended
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| 逮捕，拘押( apprehend的过去式和过去分词 )； 理解 | |
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philosophic
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| adj.哲学的，贤明的 | |
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meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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specious
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| adj.似是而非的；adv.似是而非地 | |
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datum
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| n.资料；数据；已知数 | |
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delusively
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| adv.困惑地，欺瞒地 | |
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beholder
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| n.观看者，旁观者 | |
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relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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nonentities
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| n.无足轻重的人( nonentity的名词复数 )；蝼蚁 | |
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faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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embedded
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| a.扎牢的 | |
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synthetic
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| adj.合成的，人工的；综合的；n.人工制品 | |
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decompose
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| vi.分解；vt.（使）腐败，（使）腐烂 | |
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analogous
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| adj.相似的；类似的 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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discriminates
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| 分别，辨别，区分( discriminate的第三人称单数 )； 歧视，有差别地对待 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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spatial
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| adj.空间的，占据空间的 | |
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invert
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| vt.使反转，使颠倒，使转化 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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speculative
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| adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的 | |
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experimentation
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| n.实验，试验，实验法 | |
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myopic
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| adj.目光短浅的，缺乏远见的 | |
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subdivide
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| vt.细分（细区分，再划分，重分，叠分，分小类） | |
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symbolically
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| ad.象征地，象征性地 | |
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symbolic
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| adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的 | |
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monotonously
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| adv.单调地，无变化地 | |
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accentuate
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| v.着重，强调 | |
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rhythmic
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| adj.有节奏的，有韵律的 | |
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recur
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| vi.复发，重现，再发生 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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51
syllable
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| n.音节；vt.分音节 | |
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52
divers
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| adj.不同的；种种的 | |
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stanza
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| n.（诗）节，段 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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rhythmical
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| adj.有节奏的，有韵律的 | |
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56
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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58
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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nucleus
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| n.核，核心，原子核 | |
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ascertained
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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ascertain
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| vt.发现，确定，查明，弄清 | |
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delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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deviations
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| 背离，偏离( deviation的名词复数 )； 离经叛道的行为 | |
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66
varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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67
remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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68
recurrence
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| n.复发，反复，重现 | |
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69
accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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70
increment
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| n.增值，增价；提薪，增加工资 | |
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71
discrepancies
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| n.差异，不符合（之处），不一致（之处）( discrepancy的名词复数 ) | |
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72
qualitative
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| adj.性质上的，质的，定性的 | |
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73
quantitative
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| adj.数量的，定量的 | |
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74
tunes
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| n.曲调，曲子( tune的名词复数 )v.调音( tune的第三人称单数 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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75
subdividing
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| 再分，细分( subdivide的现在分词 ) | |
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76
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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77
doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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78
stimulus
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| n.刺激，刺激物，促进因素，引起兴奋的事物 | |
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79
exertion
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| n.尽力，努力 | |
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80
devoid
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| adj.全无的，缺乏的 | |
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81
curdling
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| n.凝化v.（使）凝结( curdle的现在分词 ) | |
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82
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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83
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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84
awareness
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| n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智 | |
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85
volition
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| n.意志；决意 | |
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86
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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87
decomposed
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| 已分解的，已腐烂的 | |
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88
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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89
discrete
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| adj.个别的，分离的，不连续的 | |
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90
discreteness
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| 组件 | |
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91
solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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92
pretence
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| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
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93
symbolizing
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| v.象征，作为…的象征( symbolize的现在分词 ) | |
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94
awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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95
motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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96
epoch
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| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
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97
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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98
phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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99
psychic
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| n.对超自然力敏感的人；adj.有超自然力的 | |
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100
subjective
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| a.主观(上)的，个人的 | |
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101
retentiveness
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| n.有记性；记性强；保持力；好记性 | |
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102
collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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103
tracts
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| 大片土地( tract的名词复数 )； 地带； （体内的）道； （尤指宣扬宗教、伦理或政治的）短文 | |
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104
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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105
eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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106
ennui
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| n.怠倦，无聊 | |
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107
boredom
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| n.厌烦，厌倦，乏味，无聊 | |
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108
attentive
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| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
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109
engulf
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| vt.吞没，吞食 | |
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110
bowels
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| n.肠，内脏，内部；肠( bowel的名词复数 )；内部，最深处 | |
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111
susceptible
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| adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的 | |
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112
odiousness
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| n.可憎；讨厌；可恨 | |
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113
insipidity
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| n.枯燥无味，清淡，无精神；无生气状 | |
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114
stimulation
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| n.刺激，激励，鼓舞 | |
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115
requisite
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| adj.需要的，必不可少的；n.必需品 | |
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116
stimulating
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| adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的 | |
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117
spaciousness
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| n.宽敞 | |
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118
fluctuations
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| 波动，涨落，起伏( fluctuation的名词复数 ) | |
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119
lengthening
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| （时间或空间）延长，伸长( lengthen的现在分词 )； 加长 | |
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120
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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121
smite
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| v.重击；彻底击败；n.打；尝试；一点儿 | |
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122
awakening
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| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
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123
sonorous
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| adj.响亮的，回响的；adv.圆润低沉地；感人地；n.感人，堂皇 | |
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124
instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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125
chasm
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| n.深坑，断层，裂口，大分岐，利害冲突 | |
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126
elucidation
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| n.说明，阐明 | |
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127
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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128
attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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129
antithesis
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| n.对立；相对 | |
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130
simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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131
perpendicular
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| adj.垂直的，直立的；n.垂直线，垂直的位置 | |
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132
psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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133
projection
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| n.发射，计划，突出部分 | |
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134
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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135
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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136
flux
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| n.流动；不断的改变 | |
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137
eastward
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| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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138
explicitly
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| ad.明确地，显然地 | |
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139
previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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140
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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141
paragon
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| n.模范，典型 | |
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142
incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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143
cerebral
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| adj.脑的，大脑的；有智力的，理智型的 | |
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144
neural
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| adj.神经的，神经系统的 | |
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145
briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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146
unripe
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| adj.未成熟的；n.未成熟 | |
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147
summation
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| n.总和；最后辩论 | |
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148
stimuli
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| n.刺激（物） | |
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149
peculiarities
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| n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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150
banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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151
mingle
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| vt.使混合，使相混；vi.混合起来；相交往 | |
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152
overlap
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| v.重叠，与…交叠；n.重叠 | |
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153
overlapping
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| adj./n.交迭（的） | |
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154
sensational
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| adj.使人感动的，非常好的，轰动的，耸人听闻的 | |
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155
appreciable
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| adj.明显的，可见的，可估量的，可觉察的 | |
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156
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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157
waning
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| adj.（月亮）渐亏的，逐渐减弱或变小的n.月亏v.衰落( wane的现在分词 )；（月）亏；变小；变暗淡 | |
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158
subjectively
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| 主观地； 臆 | |
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159
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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160
appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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161
alterations
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| n.改动( alteration的名词复数 )；更改；变化；改变 | |
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162
alteration
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| n.变更，改变；蚀变 | |
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163
destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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164
shrubs
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| 灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
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165
scour
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| v.搜索；擦，洗，腹泻，冲刷 | |
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166
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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167
gnat
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| v.对小事斤斤计较，琐事 | |
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168
drooped
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| 弯曲或下垂，发蔫( droop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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169
unnaturally
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| adv.违反习俗地；不自然地；勉强地；不近人情地 | |
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170
compensating
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| 补偿，补助，修正 | |
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171
dwindles
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| v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的第三人称单数 ) | |
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172
fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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173
aphasia
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| n.失语症 | |
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174
primal
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| adj.原始的；最重要的 | |
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175
habitually
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| ad.习惯地，通常地 | |
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176
permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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177
accrues
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| v.增加( accrue的第三人称单数 )；（通过自然增长）产生；获得；（使钱款、债务）积累 | |
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