Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/15

NEW SERIES. No. 33.] [JANUARY, 1900. MIND A QUARTERLY REVIEW OF PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY. I.-PERCEPTION OF CHANGE AND DURATION. BY THE EDITOR. 1 I HAVE chosen as the subject of this address a topic which may appear to possess only a limited interest. The question with which I have to deal is as follows : When_we^ perceive a temporal process as such, how far and in what sense is it necessary that representations of prior parts of the time-series should be present to our consciousness in the perception of succeeding parts ? This seems at first sight to be simply a special question of Psychology. But a little reflexion will show that it has an important bearing on metaphysical theories which deserves the utmost attention. We find, for instance, in such writers as T. H. Green, a continual reitera- tion of the statement that the apprehension of succession cannot be itself succession that in order to be aware of B as succeeding A we must have both A and B before con- sciousness at once. The necessity does indeed appear self- evident. But it is worth while to consider what is really involved in it, and in what way the actual process of con- sciousness satisfies this requirement which is imposed upon it a priori. I am acquainted with only one metaphysical writer who has answered these questions without ambiguity or haziness. Mr. Shadworth Hodgson, in the wonderfully acute and penetrating analysis contained in the second chapter of his Metaphysic, has defined his position on this point with refreshing clearness. He explicitly affirms that, in perceiving a time sequence, the presentations of prior 1 Presidential Address delivered before the Aristotelian Society, Nov., 1899. 1