ABSTRACT
Confining ourselves strictly to memory as we have defined it, we find only reassertion of that which already has been asserted. But it is easy to see that this does not limit our view of the past. Our actual memory is not of a series of isolated facts, but its content tends to acquire a certain continuity,—a continuity which, regarded as a whole, has never been given in apprehension. For example, “it has taken me a long time to write this page,” is a memory-judgment in which I review a process of many minutes' duration, and assert it now as forming a whole. We have already seen that in the apprehension of change or continuity the immediately past remains present, and continues to form the content of the apprehending consciousness along with that which succeeds it. But this is not the full explanation of the present phenomenon. Whatever the precise psychological limits of the act of apprehension may be, no one pretends that one and the same fact continues to form the present content of the mind for more than a few seconds from the time of its presentation. Even if the content of apprehension remains qualitatively alike, its early stages become distinguishable from the present as matter of memory. It is clear, then, that we do not apprehend as a whole any fact of many minutes' duration, and therefore in asserting such a whole we are asserting what has not been given, in the form in which it is now asserted, to apprehension. On the other hand, every part of the process so remembered has formed matter of apprehension, though at different times. I do not, I imagine, apprehend a clock striking twelve, i.e. the twelve successive sounds are not simultaneously present to a single act of apprehension. I apprehend each single stroke, however, and the assertion that the clock has struck twelve combines all the apprehended contents into one. Still we have not got an exhaustive account of the matter. If each stroke is a separate isolated datum, how do the twelve get put together? We want a connecting link, which is supplied by the apprehended succession of the strokes, moment by moment. If the clock strikes with moderate speed, the first stroke is still present to consciousness when the second falls—the actual content of my apprehension should be represented, not as “ting,” but as “ting—pause—ting.” For stroke three the same thing holds, so that I have the actual succession of the twelve given me bit by bit. Consider a more continuous process, say the passage of a cart along the road. Here as the process attended to is less broken, so also is the apprehension. But, as before, consider the apprehending consciousness at any moment subsequent to the first. To that moment of consciousness is present, not a mere point of the process, but an appreciable though short part of it. Take a fresh moment very near the first, its content overlaps the first.We may represent it graphically. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203588833/3fe8d384-656e-4866-b10a-a0695306222a/content/ch5_page82-01_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
