TIME FROM THE STANDPOINT OF EXPERIMENT AND OF CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE
In some moment of "sudden light" what one of us has not been able to say, with Rossetti,
"I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell."
Are such strange hauntings of our House of Life due to the cyclic return of time? Perhaps,—but what is time?
Suppose some one should ask you, "What is an hour?" Your answer might be, "It is the interval marked off by the clock-hand between 1 and 2." "But what if your clock is running down or speeding up?" To this you would probably reply, "The clock is set and corrected by the earth, the sun and the stars, which are constant in their movements." But they are not. The earth is known to be running slow, by reason of tide friction, and this is likely to continue until it will revolve on its axis, not once a day, but once a year, presenting always the same face to the sun.
We can only measure time by uniform motion. Observe the vicious circle. Uniform motion means the covering of equal spaces in equal times. But how are we to determine our equal times? Ultimately we have no other criterion save the uniform motion of the clock-hand or the star dial. The very expressions, "uniform motion," "equal times," beg the whole question of the nature of time.
Let us then, in this predicament, consider time not from the standpoint of experiment, but of conscious experience—what Bergson calls "real