A presumption about time enters widely into our opinions. To one
person an institution which has existed for the whole of his conscious
life is part of the permanent furniture of the universe: to another it
is ephemeral. Geological time is very different from biological time.
Social time is most complex. The statesman has to decide whether to
calculate for the emergency or for the long run. Some decisions have
to be made on the basis of what will happen in the next two hours;
others on what will happen in a week, a month, a season, a decade,
when the children have grown up, or their children's children. An
important part of wisdom is the ability to distinguish the
time-conception that properly belongs to the thing in hand. The person
who uses the wrong time-conception ranges from the dreamer who ignores
the present to the philistine who can see nothing else. A true scale
of values has a very acute sense of relative time.
Distant time, past and future, has somehow to be conceived. But as
James says, "of the longer duration we have no direct 'realizing'
sense." [Footnote: _Principles of Psychology_, Vol. I, p. 638.]
The longest duration which we immediately feel is what is called the
"specious present." It endures, according to Titchener, for about six
seconds. [Footnote: Cited by Warren, _Human Psychology_, p. 255.]
"All impressions within this period of time are present to us _at
once_.
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