Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/255

PERCEPTION OF CHANGE AND DURATION. 241 cases, first of duration, secondly of sequence, cases in which, as I believe, the duration and sequence can be actually observed. I submit to analysis, first, the hearing of a single note, C, in which I show that duration is involved ; and, secondly, the hearing of two notes, C, D, one after the other, which is a case of sequence : " Note D appears above the threshold of consciousness, but without excluding note C. That is, we no longer isolate a single note from its context for the purpose of analysis , but a sequence of two notes " (Metaphysic of Experience, vol. i., p. 63). This, I maintain, is a case which stands as a sample of in- numerable others actually experienced. In innumerable cases we begin to hear one sound before we cease to hear another sound preceding it. We have thus a plain and clear experience of sequence. What further evidence is needed? What clearer evidence is possible ? But what says Dr. Stout ? It is noticeable in the first place, that he cites no words of mine to show what I suppose myself to be maintaining ; he contents himself with tacitly (on the strength, I suppose, of his " refreshing clearness "), identifying my meaning with a certain theory of a " memory image " being necessary for perceiving a time sequence, and then bringing against that theory the authority of two eminent German psychologists, one of whom directly combats it, while the other, in attempting to defend it, makes admissions which are even more fatal than the attack. Now to take first the case of sequence. Dr. Stout, as I have said, omits to notice that I speak only of memory in the sense of retention, not of memory proper, which involves recur- rence. But of what kind are the memory images belonging to the theory which Dr. Stout considers untenable, and taxes me with holding? They are images belonging to memory proper, the sound or other perception, of which they are images, having itself ceased to be presentatively heard. But this circumstance broadly and obviously distinguishes the so-called memory-image theory, in which they figure, from my view of memory in the sense of retention only, which I am careful to distinguish from memory proper, and of which alone I speak in chapter ii. Taking memory in this latter sense, my view is that there is an immediate reflec- tive perception of sequences in their lowest terms, the earlier portions of which may be said to become memories and representa- tions, and so to lay the foundations for memories and representa- tions proper, before they cease to be heard. For, by my term reflective perception is meant no more than this, that the content perceived begins to recede into the past, at and from the instant of its crossing the threshold of consciousness, which is an ever- forward-moving present instant (Metaphysic of Experience, vol. i., p. 66, etc.). The prevailing method in psychology, on the contrary, proceeds, as said above, on the basis of distinguishing so-called mental functions, presentation, representation, memory, thought, imagin- 16