Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/239

TIME AS RELATED TO CAUSALITY AND TO SPACE. 225 Psychology does therefore substantiate our philosophical doctrine by indicating change and inner connexion as ele- ments of the facts of time-consciousness. But another problem remains for psychological theory ; how shall the time-consciousness be classified, as sensational or as relational, as direct or as mediate ? To answer the question, there is needed, of course, a definition of ' the immediate,' and here we are at once confronted by a variety of meanings. Often the word is used as precise synonym for ' the present ' (as realistic attribute of the phenomenon), and from this point of view every fact of consciousness is immediate since, as experienced, it is present. A variation of this meaning makes ' immediateness ' equivalent with ' feeling of present- ness,' so that immediacy is exactly that which may distinguish the sense percept from the image. Dr. Strong, adopting this use of the word, and following in the wake of every-day realism, is obviously consistent in his refusal to call the consciousness of time ' immediate,' on the ground that it includes a consciousness of past as well as of present. But on this theory of immediacy, it already involves time, and is therefore useless in describing the time-consciousness. Im- mediateness if it meant no more than ' present ' would be a useless distinction, but, as a matter of fact, the word is ordinarily used in a wider sense. ' The immediate ' is the fact of consciousness without a history not the syllogistic conclusion which has been reached by way of ordered steps, nor the complex emotion which has passed through earlier and simpler stages, but the simple experience, the instinctive emotion, the undistinguished feeling of familiarity, or the single sensation. In their exact meaning, therefore, 'im- mediate ' and ' direct ' belong to the vocabulary of genetic, as distinguished from purely introspective psychology, for they treat the mental state from the standpoint of the reflective onlooker. On this basis, the consciousness of succession and of inner connexion are palpably 'direct,' just because they are unanalysable elements, for only a compound, whose parts may be traced back to an earlier stage or to a different combination, can be regarded from the genetic standpoint. The immediacy of the time-consciousness is often denied, because it is said to involve what would be the presence in one moment of a succession of moments. 1 But the existence of a feeling of 'succession does not imply that a past feeling has revived and added itself to a present one ; such a hy- pothesis is an illicit, associationist attempt to reduce ' feeling 1 Cf. Strong, op. cit., p. 155 aeq. 15