It is clear that a simple sequence of impressions will not suffice to constitute the idea of time; the series must be cognised as such, felt or thought as a sequence. How is it to be cognised? Contemporary opinion upon this point appears to be capable of reduction into two principal types.
1. Some admit, as adequate conditions, sensations and their consecutive images, strong states and weak states; provided, however, that the latter arise before the former have disappeared from consciousness.
Wundt supposes that similar beats of a clock succeed each other at regular intervals in a vacant consciousness. When the first has disappeared its image remains until the second succeeds it. This reproduces the first, in virtue of the law of association by similarity, but at the same time encounters the still persisting image. Hence the simple repetition of the sound contains all the elements of time-perception. The first sound (recalled by association), gives the commencement, the second the end, and the persistent image represents the length of the interval. At the moment of the second impression, the entire perception of time exists simultaneously, since all the elements are presented together: the second sound and the image directly, and the first impression by reproduction.
“The phenomena of ‘summation of stimuli’ in the nervous system prove,” says James, “that each stimulus leaves some latent activity behind it which only gradually passes away. Psychological proof of the same fact is afforded by those ‘after-images’ which we perceive when the sensorial stimulus is gone.... With the feeling of the present thing there must at all times mingle the fading echo of all those other things which the previous few seconds have supplied. Or, to state it in neural terms, there is at every moment a cumulation of brain-processes overlapping each other, of which the fainter ones are the dying phases of processes which but shortly previous were active in a maximal degree. The amount of the overlapping determines the feeling of the duration occupied.... Why such an intuition should result from such a combination of brain-processes, I do not pretend to say. All I aim at is to state the most elemental form of the psycho-physical conjunction.” James is careful to repeat in several places that he makes no attempt at explanation.
2. Others admit sensations and intervals; sensations that are no longer images, but internal sensations of tension, of effort; more properly a subconscious element, which consciousness is able to apprehend by observation or induction. This theory has a more active character than that first discussed.
The cleanest and most complete form of this interpretation is that of Münsterberg,—as set forth above.
Fouillée supports the same thesis as a particular case of his general theory of idées-forces. The apparent present is a synthesis of real presents. Our primitive perception is of change, not of stability; we are conscious of transition. The static point of view must be completed by the dynamic.
The complete separation of present and past is a mathematical fiction. The sum of transition which is a factor in appetite aids in forming the series. Time is a form of appetite; beneath the floating image there is a tendency to movement. A non-volitional being would have no representation of time: time is a form of appetition.[118]