Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/257

PERCEPTION OP CHANGE AND DURATION. 243 is observable as well. I think, therefore, that Dr. Stout's objec- tion, founded on the fact that, for himself and Herr Schumann, " a tone-sensation of one second's duration is a unity not really capable of further division," is entirely abortive. Let experi- mental psychologists show, if they can, that tone-sensations of one second's duration have their beginning and their end simul- taneous, and they will have done something at any rate towards establishing that atomism in philosophy, which sometimes seems to be their most cherished purpose. How far Dr. Stout identifies, or wishes his readers to identify, my views with the a priori requirement insisted on by the late T. H. Green, mentioned at page 1, or with the a priori argument, mentioned in his concluding paragraph, for the existence of the " hypothetic memory images " which he rejects, is left uncertain. A clear statement on Dr. Stout's part, that no such a priori re- quirement or argument is to be found in my pages, which is the simple fact, would have been welcome, could Dr. Stout have induced himself to make it. For I would remark in conclusion that, as to T. H. Green's alleged a priori requirement for the apprehension of succession, it is precisely instances of the appre- hension of duration and succession which I take for analysis in my chapter ii. ; while, as to the hypothesis of memory images, rejected by Dr. Stout and his German authorities, of this hypo- thesis I make no use at all in performing that analysis. In my view, the experience of duration and sequence is identical with the apprehension of them, both experience and apprehension being taken as modes of consciousness as a knowing, and abstrac- tion being made, for the time, from the knowing or conscious Subject, together with the ways in which his function of knowing may be performed. SHADWOETH H. HODGSON. HAVE I misunderstood and misrepresented Mr. Hodgson ? He says that I have, and considering the difficulty of understanding philosophical writings, which are at once original and subtle, the presumption is that he is right. But I must confess my inability to discover wherein the misunderstanding lies. I can only beg of readers to go back to chap, ii., vol. i., of the Metaphysic of Ex- perience and examine it carefully. I cannot see what other inter- pretation than mine the following passage is susceptible of : " The retrospective or representative moment of experience has thus for its content the perception of a process-content, differing from itself in point both of vividness and place in time sequence. Its con- tent as a perceiving is thus identical in kind, but different in vividness and in time, from that of which as its object it is the perception. There is in fact a repetition of the objective content in the objective perception of it." This is perhaps the most explicit passage, but the tenor of the whole chapter is to the same effect. [G. F. S.]