Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/472

ME. JAMES WARD'S " PSYCHOLOGY ". 471 But how do we come by our knowledge of Succession and Duration, in all the fulness of their completed meaning? Past, present and future, as above figured, are in the con- sciousness simultaneously, and are distinguished only as real and ideal. Succession is, in fact, a mode of interpret- ing or stating a peculiar mixture of the co-existent : in the co-existent is a peculiar experience that we may call time-perspective ; but even that is not first conceived as succession. For the development of this idea we must fall back on the so-called temporal signs, that is, the residual traces of the movements of attention in passing from one event to another in the series of presentations and their re-presen- tations. These signs are aided by the progressive variation in both intensity and distinctness as we pass along the perspective one way or the other. The variations by them- selves would not suffice, as we might confound the faintness arising from what is remote with the faintness of a near but feeble original. The temporal signs, however, save us from this mistake. As to our subjective estimate of Duration, there are various elements to be considered. When pleasure or pain are con- nected with occurrences, the estimate of duration is most delusive, and Mr. Ward enters minutely into the psychology of this effect, belonging as it does to the general theory of pleasure and pain ; and I believe his explanation is both ingenious and just. The estimate of duration in things that are indifferent has been subjected to experiment with more or less definite results. It is doubtless a result of education to take the proper measure of the time occupied by an event ; and our education has for its basis the standards provided by our artificial time-measures. Equally subtle is the author's treatment of the question whether our notion of time remains discrete or becomes wholly continuous. The mind begins by hops or leaps, but at last seems to acquire the feeling or idea of continuity, with evanescent breaks, like the wheel of Savart, when its speed is increased to the pace of fusion of the separate beats. In all that regards the ideas and feelings of succession and duration, the German writers have been more assiduous students than the English, and Mr. Ward has added his own modifications to the German results. Before going on to the higher developments of intelligence, the author pauses to review the emotional and active con- stituents of mind in their more elementary phases. And first of " Feeling," that is, Pleasure 'and Pain. Starting from the broad generalisation as an account of