an hour, like a bell struck every hour with a hammer, the ordinary term of life would seem very short. On the other hand, if our time sense were always as acute as it is in dreams, uncounted aeons would seem to be lived through in the interval between childhood and old age.
Imagine a music machine so cunningly constructed and adjusted as not only to sound each note and chord in its proper sequence and relation, but to regulate also the duration of the sound vibration. If this machine were operated in such a manner as to play, in a single second of time, the entire overture of an opera which would normally occupy half an hour, we should hear only an unintelligible noise a second long. This would be due to no defect in the sound-producing mechanism, but to the limitations of the sound-receiving mechanism, our auditory apparatus. Could this be altered to conform to the unusual conditions—could it capture and convey to consciousness every note of the overture in a second of time—that second would seem to last half an hour, provided that every other criterion for the measurement of duration were denied for the time being.