Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/71

60 G. S. HALL AND J. JASTEOW : and the exit therefrom of the registry-innervation involved in counting it, as separated in time by some not inconsiderable proportion of the simple reaction-time from ear to tongue. If the interval between the clicks is greater than or equal to this reduced reaction-interval, consciousness is done with the first click when the second arrives, and there is no error. If, however, the second click begins to be recognised in the focus of consciousness before this has completely initiated the act of tallying the first, and if the fastest rate of doing so has already been attained, then the third click will come a little earlier in the process, until at length a click in the later afferent stage will cease to be distinguishable from the perhaps more widely irradiated process of the earlier efferent stage of tallying, and will drop out of consciousness and be lost, possibly after the analogy of the second of two sub-maximal stimuli in myological work, which produces no summation if extremely near the first in time. There is a disparateness between hearing clicks and counting, as there is between hearing the bell and seeing the index moving over the divisions of the dial, only it is of a different kind and perhaps degree ; but the two acts are united in a " complexion " (Wundt), like all other impressions, if their apperception is simultaneous. If this be the explanation, we should expect that, in certain melancholias and other mental disorders in which the answer to the simplest question is delayed for perhaps a whole minute or more, this dropping out of successive sounds with great assurance that all are counted might begin at a much slower rate. But again the sense of manyness, which we get from the first two or three clicks, acts as a stimulus to us to bend all available energy to tally as fast as possible, and this concentration makes the se> tion of the clicks dim. Thus it may be enough to simply say that, as we are unable to realise the different acuteness of the time-sense in the domains of different senses, so we fail to ap- preciate how wide the interval is between our power to hear and to count. We do not realise how far the fastest counting falls short of the fastest hearing. In judging of small divisions of time, we seem, as Vierordt thought, to take relatively large periods, perhaps even as great as our psychic constant (or the time ve reproduce with least change) so large at least that we ran over- look it readily, and then pair or otherwise group the subdivisions which do not get into the field of direct time-sensibility them- selves. The focus of apperception is perhaps dominated by the rhythm of the largest and more slowly loading and discharging motor cells. Although we can discriminate a liner intermittency by means of the smaller sensory cells, this is prone to be done more in the indirect field of consciousness, and these smaller moments of time speedily fall out of sense-memory into oblivion like knowledge or impressions not dhvrtly reacted on. If imme- diately known time be discrete, and temporal continuity be an inference, as seems likely, these finer temporal signs are some-