SECTION TWO

THE ANALYSIS OF TIME-CONSCIOUSNESS

§ 7. The Interpretation of the Comprehension of Temporal Objects [Zeitobjekten] as Momentary Comprehension and as Enduring Act

A conception which derives from Herbart, was taken up by Lotze, and played a major role in the whole following period, operates as an impelling motive in Brentano’s theory. The conception is this: for the comprehension of a sequence of representations (A and B, for example) it is necessary that they be the absolutely simultaneous Objects of a referential [beziehended] cognition which embraces them completely and indivisibly in a single unifying act. All representations of a direction, a passage, or a distance—in short, everything which includes the comparison of several elements and expresses the relation between them—can be conceived only as the product of a temporally comprehensive act of cognition. Such representations would all be impossible if the act of representation itself were completely merged in temporal succession. On this interpretation, the assumption that the intuition of a temporal interval takes place in a now, in a temporal point, appears to be self-evident and altogether inescapable. In general, it appears as a matter of course that every consciousness which concerns any whole or any plurality of distinguishable moments (therefore, every consciousness of relation and complexion) encompasses its object in an indivisible temporal point. Whenever consciousness is directed toward a whole whose parts are successive, there can be an intuitive consciousness of this whole only if the parts combine in the form of representatives [Repräsentanten] of the unity of the momentary intuition. Against this “dogma of the momentariness of whole of consciousness” (as he called it) W. Stern raised an objection.6 He maintained that there are cases in which on the basis of a temporally extended content of consciousness a unitary apprehension takes place which is spread out over a temporal interval (the so-called specious present). Thus, for example, a discrete succession can be held together without prejudice to the lack of simultaneity of its members through a bond of consciousness, through a unitary apprehension. That several successive tones yield a melody is possible only in this way, that the succession of psychical processes are united “forthwith” in a common structure. They are in consciousness one after the other, but they fall within one and the same common act. We do not have the sounds all at once, as it were, and we do not hear the melody by virtue of the circumstance that the earlier tones endure with the last. Rather, the tones build up a successive unity with a common effect, the form of apprehension. Naturally, this form is perfected only with the last tone. Accordingly, there is a perception of temporally successive unities just as of coexisting ones, and, in this case, also a direct apprehension of identity, similarity, and difference. “No artificial assumption is required to the effect that the comparison always comes about because the memory-image of the first tone always persists beside the second; rather, the entire content of consciousness uncoiling within the specious present becomes proportionate to the foundation of the resulting apprehension of similarity and difference.”

What stands in the way of a clarification of the problem in dispute both in these statements and in the whole discussion associated with them is the want of the absolutely necessary distinctions which we have already portrayed in the case of Brentano. The question still remains how the apprehension of transcendent temporal Objects which extend over a duration is to be understood. Are the Objects realized in terms of a continuous similarity (like unaltered things) or as constantly changing (like material processes, motion, or alteration, for example)? Objects [Objekte] of this kind are constituted in a multiplicity of immanent data and apprehensions which themselves run off as a succession. Is it possible to combine these successive, expiring [ablaufenden], representative data in one now-moment? In that case a completely new question arises, namely, how, in addition to “temporal Objects,” both immanent and transcendent, is time itself, the duration and succession of Objects, constituted? These different lines of description (which are only superficially indicated here and require further differentiation) must indeed be kept in view throughout the analysis, although all these questions are closely related so that one cannot be answered without the others.

It is indeed evident that the perception of a temporal Object itself has temporality, that perception of duration itself presupposes duration of perception, and that perception of any temporal configuration whatsoever itself has its temporal form. And, disregarding all transcendencies, the phenomenological temporality which belongs to the indispensable essence of perception according to all its phenomenological constituents still remains. Since Objective temporality is always phenomenologically constituted and is present for us as Objectivity and moment of an Objectivity according to the mode of appearance only through this constitution, a phenomenological analysis of time cannot explain the constitution of time without reference to the constitution of the temporal Object. By temporal Objects, in this particular sense, we mean Objects which not only are unities in time but also include temporal extension in themselves. When a tone sounds, my Objectifying apprehension can make the tone which endures and sounds into an object, but not the duration of the tone or the tone in its duration. The same also holds for a melody—for every variation and also for every continuance considered as such. Let us take a particular melody or cohesive part of a melody as an example. The matter seems very simple at first; we hear a melody, i.e., we perceive it, for hearing is indeed perception. While the first tone is sounding, the second comes, then the third, and so on. Must we not say that when the second tone sounds I hear it, but I no longer hear the first, and so on? In truth, therefore, I do not hear the melody but only the particular tone which is actually present. That the expired part of the melody is objective to me is due—one is inclined to say—to memory, and it is due to expectation which looks ahead that, on encountering the tone actually sounding, I do not assume that that is all.

We cannot rest satisfied with this explanation, however, for everything said until now depends on the individual tone. Every tone itself has a temporal extension: with the actual sounding I hear it as now. With its continued sounding, however, it has an ever new now, and the tone actually preceding is changing into something past. Therefore, I hear at any instant only the actual phase of the tone, and the Objectivity of the whole enduring tone is constituted in an act-continuum which in part is memory, in the smallest punctual part is perception, and in a more extensive part expectation. However, this seems to lead back to Brentano’s theory. At this point, therefore, we must initiate a more profound analysis.

§ 8. Immanent Temporal Objects [Zeitobjekte] and Their Modes of Appearance

We now exclude all transcendent apprehension and positing [Setzung] and take the sound purely as a hyletic datum. It begins and stops, and the whole unity of its duration, the unity of the whole process in which it begins and ends, “proceeds” to the end in the ever more distant past. In this sinking back, I still “hold” it fast, have it in a “retention,” and as long as the retention persists the sound has its own temporality. It is the same and its duration is the same. I can direct my attention to the mode of its being given. I am conscious of the sound and the duration which it fills in a continuity of “modes,” in a “continuous flux.” A point, a phase of this flux is termed “consciousness of sound beginning” and therein I am conscious of the first temporal point of the duration of the sound in the mode of the now. The sound is given; that is, I am conscious of it as now, and I am so conscious of it “as long as” I am conscious of any of its phases as now. But if any temporal phase (corresponding to a temporal point of the duration of the sound) is an actual now (with the exception of the beginning point), then I am conscious of a continuity of phases as “before,” and I am conscious of the whole interval of the temporal duration from the beginning-point to the now-point as an expired duration. I am not yet conscious, however, of the remaining interval of the duration. At the end-point, I am conscious of this point itself as a now-point and of the whole duration as expired (in other words, the end-point is the beginning point of a new interval of time which is no longer an interval of sound). “During” this whole flux of consciousness, I am conscious of one and the same sound as enduring, as enduring now. “Beforehand” (supposing it was not expected, for example) I was not conscious of it. “Afterward” I am “still” conscious of it “for a while” in “retention” as having been. It can be arrested and in a fixating regard [fixierenden Blick] be fixed and abiding. The whole interval of duration of the sound or “the” sound in its extension is something dead, so to speak, a no longer living production, a structure animated by no productive point of the now. This structure, however, is continually modified and sinks back into emptiness [Leere]. The modification of the entire interval then is an analogous one, essentially identical with that modification which, during the period of actuality, the expired portion of the duration undergoes in the passage of consciousness to ever new productions.

What we have described here is the manner in which the immanent-temporal Object “appears” in a continuous flux, i.e., how it is “given.” To describe this manner does not mean to describe the temporal duration itself, for it is the same sound with its duration that belongs to it, which, although not described, to be sure, is presupposed in the description. The same duration is present, actual, self-generating duration and then is past, “expired” duration, still known or produced in recollection “as if” it were new. The same sound which is heard now is, from the point of view of the flux of consciousness which follows it, past, its duration expired. To my consciousness, points of temporal duration recede, as points of a stationary object in space recede when I “go away from the object.” The object retains its place; even so does the sound retain its time. Its temporal point is unmoved, but the sound vanishes into the remoteness of consciousness; the distance from the generative now becomes ever greater. The sound itself is the same, but “in the way that” it appears, the sound is continually different.

§ 9. The Consciousness of the Appearances of Immanent Objects [Objekte]

On closer inspection, we are able to distinguish still other lines of thought with reference to the description: (1) We can make self-evident assertions concerning the immanent Object in itself, e.g., that it now endures, that a certain part of the duration has elapsed, that the duration of the sound apprehended in the now (naturally, with the content of the sound) constantly sinks back into the past and an ever new point of duration enters into the now or is now, that the expired duration recedes from the actual now-point (which is continually filled up in some way or other) and moves back into an ever more “distant” past, and so on. (2) We can also speak of the way in which we are “conscious of” all differences in the “appearing” of immanent sounds and their content of duration. We speak here with reference to the perception of the duration of the sound which extends into the actual now, and say that the sound, which endures, is perceived, and that of the interval of duration of the sound only the point of duration characterized as now is veritably perceived. Of the interval that has expired we say that we are conscious of it in retentions, specifically, that we are conscious of those parts or phases of the duration, not sharply to be differentiated, which lie closest to the actual now-point with diminishing clarity, while those parts lying further back in the past are wholly unclear; we are conscious of them only as empty [leer]. The same thing is true with regard to the running-off of the entire duration. Depending on its distance from the actual now, that part of the duration which lies closest still has perhaps a little clarity; the whole disappears in obscurity, in a void retentional consciousness, and finally disappears completely (if one may say so) as soon as retention ceases.7

In the clear sphere we find, therefore, a greater distinction and dispersion (in fact, the more so, the closer the sphere to the actual now). The further we withdraw from the now, however, the greater the blending and drawing together. If in reflection we immerse ourselves in the unity of a structured process, we observe that an articulated part of the process “draws together” as it sinks into the past—a kind of temporal perspective (within the originary temporal appearance) analogous to spatial perspective. As the temporal Object moves into the past, it is drawn together on itself and thereby also becomes obscure.

We must now examine more closely what we find here and can describe as the phenomena of temporally constitutive consciousness, that consciousness in which temporal objects with their temporal determinations are constituted. We distinguish the enduring, immanent Object in its modal setting [das Objekt im Wie], the way in which we are conscious of it as actually present or as past. Every temporal being “appears” in one or another continually changing mode of running-off, and the “Object in the mode of running-off” is in this change always something other, even though we still say that the Object and every point of its time and this time itself are one and the same. The “Object in the mode of running-off” we cannot term a form of consciousness (any more than we can call a spatial phenomenon, a body in its appearance from one side or the other, from far or near, a form of consciousness). “Consciousness,” “lived experience,” refers to an Object by means of an appearance in which “the Object in its modal setting” subsists. Obviously, we must recognize talk of “intentionality” as ambiguous, depending on whether we have in mind the relation of the appearance to what appears or the relation of consciousness on the one hand to “what appears in its modal setting” and on the other to what merely appears.

§ 10. The Continua of Running-off Phenomena—The Diagram of Time

We should prefer to avoid talk of “appearance” when referring to phenomena which constitute temporal Objects, for these phenomena are themselves immanent Objects and are appearances in a wholly different sense. We speak here of “running-off phenomena” [Ablaufsphänomene], or better yet of “modes of temporal orientation,” and with reference to the immanent Objects themselves of their “running-off characters” (e.g., now, past). With regard to the running-off phenomenon, we know that it is a continuity of constant transformations which form an inseparable unit, not severable into parts which could be by themselves nor divisible into phases, points of the continuity, which could be by themselves. The parts which by a process of abstraction we can throw into relief can be only in the entire running-off. This is also true of the phases and points of the continuity of running-off. It is evident that we can also say of this continuity that in certain ways it is unalterable as to form. It is unthinkable that the continuity of phases would be such that it contained the same phase-mode twice or indeed contained it extended over an entire part-interval. Just as every temporal point (and every temporal interval) is, so to speak, different from every other “individual” point and cannot occur twice, so also no mode of running-off can occur twice. However, we shall carry our analysis still further here and hence must make our distinctions clear.

To begin with, we emphasize that modes of running-off of an immanent temporal Object have a beginning, that is to say, a source-point. This is the mode of running-off with which the immanent Object begins to be. It is characterized as now. In the continuous line of advance, we find something remarkable, namely, that every subsequent phase of running-off is itself a continuity, and one constantly expanding, a continuity of pasts. The continuity of the modes of running-off of the duration of the Object we contrast to the continuity of the modes of running-off of each point of the duration which obviously is enclosed in the continuity of those first modes of running-off; therefore, the continuity of running-off of an enduring Object is a continuum whose phases are the continua of the modes of running-off of the different temporal points of the duration of the Object. If we go along the concrete continuity, we advance in continuous modifications, and in this process the mode of running-off is constantly modified, i.e., along the continuity of running-off of the temporal points concerned. Since a new now is always presenting itself, each now is changed into a past, and thus the entire continuity of the running-off of the pasts of the preceding points moves uniformly “downward” into the depths of the past. In our figure the solid horizontal line illustrates the modes of running-off of the enduring Object. These modes extend from a point O on for a definite interval which has the last now as an end-point. Then the series of modes of running-off begins which no longer contains a now (of this duration). The duration is no longer actual but past and constantly sinks deeper into the past. The figure thus provides a complete picture of the double continuity of modes of running-off.

§ 11. Primal Impression and Retentional Modification

The “source-point” with which the “generation” of the enduring Object begins is a primal impression. This consciousness is engaged in continuous alteration. The actual [leibhafte] tonal now is constantly changed into something that has been; constantly, an ever fresh tonal now, which passes over into modification, peels off. However, when the tonal now, the primal impression, passes over into retention, this retention is itself again a now, an actual existent. While it itself is actual (but not an actual sound), it is the retention of a sound that has been. A ray of meaning [Strahl der Meinung] can be directed toward the now, toward the retention, but it can also be directed toward that of which we are conscious in retention, the past sound. Every actual now of consciousness, however, is subject to the law of modification. The now changes continuously from retention to retention. There results, therefore, a stable continuum which is such that every subsequent point is a retention for every earlier one. And every retention is already a continuum. The sound begins and steadily continues. The tonal now is changed into one that has been. Constantly flowing, the impressional consciousness passes over into an ever fresh retentional consciousness. Going along the flux or with it, we have a continuous series of retentions pertaining to the beginning point. Moreover, every earlier point of this series shades off [sich abschattet] again as a now in the sense of retention. Thus, in each of these retentions is included a continuity of retentional modifications, and this continuity is itself again a point of actuality which retentionally shades off. This does not lead to a simple infinite regress because each retention is in itself a continuous modification which, so to speak, bears in itself the heritage [Erbe] of the past in the form of a series of shadings. It is not true that lengthwise along the flux each earlier retention is merely replaced by a new one, even though it is a continuous process. Each subsequent retention, rather, is not merely a continuous modification arising from the primal impression but a continuous modification of the same beginning point.

Up to this point, we have been chiefly concerned with the perception of the originary constitution of temporal Objects and have sought analytically to understand the consciousness of time given in them. However, the consciousness of temporality does not take place merely in this form. When a temporal Object has expired, when its actual duration is over, the consciousness of the Object, now past, by no means fades away, although it no longer functions as perceptual consciousness, or better, perhaps, as impressional consciousness. (As before, we have in mind immanent Objects, which are not really constituted in a “perception.”) To the “impression,” “primary remembrance” [primäre Erinnerung], or, as we say, retention, is joined. Basically, we have already analyzed this mode of consciousness in conjunction with the situation previously considered. For the continuity of phases joined to the actual “now” is indeed nothing other than such a retention or a continuity of retentions. In the case of the perception of a temporal Object (it makes no difference to the present observation whether we take an immanent or transcendent Object), the perception always terminates in a now-apprehension, in a perception in the sense of a positing-as-now. During the perception of motion there takes place, moment by moment, a “comprehension-as-now; “constituted therein is the now actual phase of the motion itself. But this now-apprehension is, as it were, the nucleus of a comet’s tail of retentions referring to the earlier now-points of the motion. If perception no longer occurs, however, we no longer see motion, or—if it is a question of a melody—the melody is over and silence begins. Thus no new phase is joined to the last phase; rather, we have a mere phase of fresh memory, to this is again joined another such, and so on. There continually takes place, thereby, a shoving back into the past. The same complex continuously undergoes a modification until it disappears, for hand in hand with the modification goes a diminution which finally ends in imperceptibility. The originary temporal field is obviously circumscribed exactly like a perceptual one. Indeed, generally speaking, one might well venture the assertion that the temporal field always has the same extension. It is displaced, as it were, with regard to the perceived and freshly remembered motion and its Objective time in a manner similar to the way in which the visual field is displaced with regard to Objective space.8

§ 12. Retention as Proper Intentionality

We must still discuss in greater detail what sort of modification it is that we designate as retentional.

One speaks of the dying or fading away, etc., of the content of sensation when veritable perception passes over into retention. Now, according to the statements made hitherto, it is already clear that the retentional “content” is, in the primordial sense, no content at all. When a sound dies away, it is first sensed with particular fullness (intensity), and thereupon comes to an end in a sudden reduction of intensity. The sound is still there, is still sensed, but in mere reverberation. This real sensation of sound should be distinguished from the tonal moment in retention. The retentional sound is not actually present but “primarily remembered” precisely in the now. It is not really on hand in retentional consciousness. The tonal moment that belongs to this consciousness, however, cannot be another sound which is really on hand, not even a very weak one which is qualitatively similar (like an echo). A present sound can indeed remind us of a past sound, present it, symbolize it; this, however, already presupposes another representation of the past. The intuition of the past itself cannot be a symbolization [Verbildlichung]; it is an originary consciousness. Naturally, we cannot deny that echoes exist. But where we recognize and distinguish them we are soon able to establish that they do not belong to retention as such but to perception. The reverberation of a violin tone is a very weak violin tone and is completely different from the retention of loud sounds which have just been. The reverberation itself, as well as after-images in general, which remain behind after the stronger givens of sensation, has absolutely nothing to do with the nature of retention, to say nothing of the possibility that the reverberation must necessarily be ascribed to retention.

Truly, however, it pertains to the essence of the intuition of time that in every point of its duration (which, reflectively, we are able to make into an object) it is consciousness of what has just been and not mere consciousness of the now-point of the objective thing appearing as having duration. In this consciousness, we are aware of what has just been in the continuity pertaining to it and in every phase in a determinate “mode of appearance” differentiated as to “content” and “apprehension.” One notices the steam whistle just sounding; in every point there is an extension and in the extension there is the “appearance” which, in every phase of this extension, has its moment of quality and its moment of apprehension. On the other hand, the moment of quality is no real quality, no sound which really is now, i.e., which exists as now, provided that one can speak of the immanent content of sound. The real content of the now-consciousness includes sounds which, if the occasion should arise, are sensed; in which case, they are then necessarily to be characterized in Objectifying apprehension as perceived, as present, but in no wise as past. Retentional consciousness includes real consciousness of the past of sound, primary remembrance of sound, and is not to be resolved into sensed sound and apprehension as memory. Just as a phantasied sound is not a sound but the phantasy of a sound, or just as tonal sensation and tonal phantasy are fundamentally different and are not to be considered as possibly the same, except for a difference in interpretation, likewise primary, intuitive remembered sound is intrinsically something other than a perceived sound, and the primary remembrance of sound is something other than the sensation of sound.

§ 13. The Necessity for the Precedence of Impression over Every Retention—Self-evidence of Retention

Is there a law to the effect that primary remembrance is possible only if continuously joined to a preceding sensation or perception, that every retentional phase is thinkable only as a phase, i.e., is not to be expanded into an interval which would be identical in all phases? One might say without reservation that this is absolutely evident. An empirical psychologist, accustomed to treating everything psychical as a mere succession of events, would of course deny this. Such a person would say: Why should not an originative [anfangendes] consciousness be thinkable, one which begins with a fresh remembrance without previously having had a perception? It may in fact be the case that perception is necessary to produce a fresh remembrance. It may actually be true that human consciousness can have memories, primary ones included, only after it has had perceptions, but the opposite is also conceivable. In contrast to this, we teach the a priori necessity of the precedence of a perception or primal impression over the corresponding retention. We must above all insist that a phase is thinkable only as a phase and without the possibility of an extension. A now-phase is thinkable only as the boundary of a continuity of retentions, just as every retentional phase is itself thinkable only as a point of such a continuum, that is, for every now of the consciousness of time. If this is true, however, an entire completed series of retentions should not be thinkable without a corresponding perception preceding it. This implies that the series of retentions which pertains to a now is itself a limit and is necessarily modified. What is remembered “sinks ever further into the past;” moreover, what is remembered is necessarily something sunken, something that of necessity permits an evident recollection [Wiedererinnerung] which traces it back to a now reproduced.

One might ask, however: Can I not have a memory, even a primary one, of an A which in truth has never existed? Certainly. Something even stronger can be asserted. I can also have a perception of A although in reality A does not exist. Accordingly, we do not assert as a certainty that when we have a retention of A (assuming A is a transcendent Object), A must precede the retention, although we do assert that A must have been perceived.

Whether A is the object of primary attention or not, it really is present as something of which we are conscious even if unnoticed or noticed only incidentally. If it is a question of an immanent Object, however, the following holds true: a succession, an alternation, a variation of immanent data, if it “appears,” is absolutely indubitable. And within a transcendent perception, the immanent succession belonging essentially to the composition of this perception is also absolutely indubitable.9 It is basically absurd to argue: How in the now can I know of a not-now, since I cannot compare the not-now which no longer is with the now (that is to say, the memory-image present in the now)? As if it pertained to the essence of memory that an image present in the now were presupposed for another thing similar to it, and as with graphic representation, I could and must compare the two. Memory or retention is not figurative consciousness, but something totally different. What is remembered is, of course, not now; otherwise it would not be something that has been but would be actually present. And in memory (retention) what is remembered is not given as now: otherwise, memory or retention would not be just memory but perception (or primal impression). A comparison of what we no longer perceive but are merely conscious of in retention with something outside it makes no sense at all. Just as in perception, I see what has being now, and in extended perceptions, no matter how constituted, what has enduring being, so in primary remembrance I see what is past. What is past is given therein, and givenness of the past is memory.

If we now again take up the question of whether a retentional consciousness that is not the continuation of an impressional consciousness is thinkable, we must say that it is impossible, for every retention in itself refers back to an impression. “Past” and “now” exclude each other. Something past and something now can indeed be identically the same but only because it has endured between the past and now.

§ 14. Reproduction of Temporal Objects [Objekten]—Secondary Remembrance

We characterized primary remembrance or retention as a comet’s tail which is joined to actual perception. Secondary remembrance or recollection is completely different from this. After primary remembrance is past [dahin], a new memory of this motion or that melody can emerge. The difference between the two forms of memory, which we have already touched on, must now be explained in detail. If retention is joined to actual perception, whether during its perceptual flux or in continuous union following its running-off, then at first sight it is natural to say (as Brentano has) that the actual perception is constituted on the basis of phantasies as representation [Repräsentation], as presentification. Now, just as immediate presentifications are joined to perceptions, so also can autonomous presentifications appear without being joined to perceptions. Such are the secondary remembrances. But (as we have already brought out in the critique of Brentano’s theory) serious doubts arise. Let us consider an example of secondary remembrance. We remember a melody, let us say, which in our youth we heard during a concert. Then it is obvious that the entire phenomenon of memory has, mutatis mutandis, exactly the same constitution as the perception of the melody. Like the perception, it has a favored point; to the now-point of the perception corresponds a now-point of the memory, and so on. We run through a melody in phantasy; we hear “as if” [gleichsam] first the first note, then the second, etc. At any given time, there is always a sound (or a tonal phase) in the now-point. The preceding sounds, however, are not erased from consciousness. With the apprehension of the sound appearing now, heard as if now, primary remembrance blends in the sounds heard as if just previously and the expectation (protention) of the sound to come. Again, the now-point has for consciousness a temporal halo [Hof] which is brought about through a continuity of memory. The complete memory of the melody consists of a continuum of such temporal continuities or of continuities of apprehension of the kind described. Finally, when the melody presentified has been run through, a retention is joined to this as-if hearing; the as-if heard still reverberates a while, a continuity of apprehension is still there but no longer as heard. Everything thus resembles perception and primary remembrance and yet is not itself perception and primary remembrance. We do not really hear and have not really heard when in memory or phantasy we let a melody run its course, note by note. In the former case, we really hear; the temporal Object itself is perceived; the melody itself is the object of perception. And, likewise, temporal periods, temporal determinations and relations are themselves given, perceived. And again, after the melody has sounded, we no longer perceive it as present although we still have it in consciousness. It is no longer a present melody but one just past. Its being just past is not mere opinion but a given fact, self-given and therefore perceived. In contrast to this, the temporal present [Gegenwart] in recollection is remembered, presentified. And the past is remembered in the same way, presentified but not perceived. It is not the primarily given and intuited past.

On the other hand, the recollection itself is present, originarily constituted recollection and subsequently that which has just been. It generates itself in a continuum of primal data and retentions and is constituted (better, re-constituted) jointly with an immanent or transcendent objectivity of duration (depending on whether it is immanently or transcendently oriented). On the other hand, retention generates no objectivities of duration (whether originary or reproductive), but merely retains what is produced in consciousness and impresses on it the character of the “just past.”10

§ 15. The Modes of Accomplishment of Reproduction

Recollection can make its appearance in different forms of accomplishment. We accomplish it either by simply laying hold of what is recollected, as when, for example, a recollection “emerges” and we look at what is remembered with a glancing ray [Blickstrahl] wherein what is remembered is indeterminate, perhaps a favored momentary phase intuitively brought forth, but not a recapitulative memory. Or we accomplish it in a real, re-productive, recapitulative memory in which the temporal object is again completely built up in a continuum of presentifications, so that we seem to perceive it again, but only seemingly, as-if. The whole process is a presentificational modification of the process of perception with all its phases and levels, including retentions. However, everything has the index of reproductive modification.

The simple act of looking at or apprehending we also discover immediately on the basis of retention, as, for example, when a melody which lies within the unity of a retention is run through and we look back (reflect) on a part of it without producing it again. This is an act which, developed in successive stages, also in stages of spontaneity, e.g., the spontaneity of thought, is possible for everyone. The objectivities of thought, indeed, are also successively constituted. It appears, therefore, we can say that objectivities which are built up originally in temporal processes, being constituted member by member or phase by phase (as correlates of continuous, multiformed, cohesive, and homogenous acts), may be apprehended in a backward glance as if they were objects complete in a temporal point. But then this givenness certainly refers back to another “primordial” one.

This looking toward or back to what is retentionally given—and the retention itself—is realized in true representification [Wiedervergegenwärtigung]. What is given as just having been turns out to be identical with what is recollected.

Further differences between primary and secondary remembrance will be evident when we relate them to perception.

§ 16. Perception as Originary Presentation [Gegenwärtigung] as Distinguished from Retention and Recollection

Any reference to “perception” still requires some discussion here. In the “perception of a melody,” we distinguish the tone given now, which we term the “perceived,” from those which have gone by, which we say are “not perceived.” On the other hand, we call the whole melody one that is perceived, although only the now-point actually is. We follow this procedure because not only is the extension of the melody given point for point in an extension of the act of perception but also the unity of retentional consciousness still “holds” the expired tones themselves in consciousness and continuously establishes the unity of consciousness with reference to the homogeneous temporal Object, i.e., the melody. An Objectivity such as a melody cannot itself be originarily given except as “perceived” in this form. The constituted act,11 constructed from now-consciousness and retentional consciousness, is adequate perception of the temporal Object. This Object will indeed include temporal differences, and temporal differences are constituted precisely in such phases, in primal consciousness, retention, and protention. If the purposive [meinende] intention is directed toward the melody, toward the whole Object, we have nothing but perception. If the intention is directed toward a particular tone or a particular measure for its own sake, we have perception so long as precisely the thing intended is perceived, and mere retention as soon as it is past. Objectively [objektiver] considered, the measure no longer appears as “present” but as “past.” The whole melody, however, appears as present so long as it still sounds, so long as the notes belonging to it, intended in the one nexus of apprehensions, still sound. The melody is past only after the last note has gone.

As we must assert in accordance with the preceding statements, this relativation carries over to the individual tones. Each is constituted in a continuity of tonal data, and only a punctual phase is actually present as now at any given moment, while the others are connected as a retentional train. We can say, however, that a temporal Object is perceived (or intentionally known) as long as it is still produced in continuous, newly appearing primal impressions.

We have then characterized the past itself as perceived. If, in fact, we do not perceive the passing [Vergehen], are we not, in the cases described, directly conscious of the just-having-been of the “just past” in its self-givenness, in the mode of being self-given? Obviously, the meaning of “perception” here obtaining does not coincide with the earlier one. Further analysis is required.

If, in the comprehension of a temporal Object, we distinguish between perceptive and memorial [erinnerendes] (retentional) consciousness, then the contrast between the perception and the primary remembrance of an Object corresponds to that between “now present” and “past.” Temporal Objects, and this belongs to their essence, spread their content over an interval of time, and such Objects can be constituted only in acts which likewise constitute temporal distinctions. Temporally constitutive acts, however, are essentially acts which also constitute the present and the past. They have that type of “temporal Object-perception” which, in conformity with their peculiar apprehensional constitution, we have described in detail. Temporal Objects must be thus constituted. This implies that an act which claims to give a temporal Object itself must contain in itself “now-apprehensions,” “past-apprehensions,” and the like, and, in fact, in a primordially constitutive way.

If we now relate what has been said about perception to the differences of the givenness with which temporal Objects make their appearance, then the antithesis of perception is primary remembrance, which appears here, and primary expectation (retention and protention), whereby perception and non-perception continually pass over into one another. In the consciousness of the direct, intuitive comprehension of a temporal Object, e.g., a melody, the passage, tone, or part now heard is perceived, and not perceived is what is momentarily intuited as past. Apprehensions here pass continually over into one another and terminate in an apprehension constituting the now; this apprehension, however, is only an ideal limit. We are concerned here with a continuum of gradations in the direction of an ideal limit, like the convergence of various shades of red toward an ideally pure red. However, in this case, we do not have individual apprehensions corresponding to the individual shades of red, which, indeed, can be given for themselves. Rather, we always have and, according to the nature of the matter, can only have continuities of apprehensions, or better, a single continuum which is constantly modified. If somehow we divide this continuum into two adjoining parts, that part which includes the now, or is capable of constituting it, designates and constitutes the “gross” now, which, as soon as we divide it further, immediately breaks down again into a finer now and a past, etc.

Perception, therefore, has here the character of an act which includes a continuity of such characters and is distinguished by the possession of that ideal limit mentioned above. Pure memory is a similar continuity, but one which does not possess this ideal limit. In an ideal sense, then, perception (impression) would be the phase of consciousness which constitutes the pure now, and memory every other phase of the continuity. But this is just an ideal limit, something abstract which can be nothing for itself. Moreover, it is also true that even this ideal now is not something toto caelo different from the not-now but continually accommodates itself thereto. The continual transition from perception to primary remembrance conforms to this accommodation.

§ 17. Perception as a Self-Giving [Selbstgebender] Act in Contrast to Reproduction

Perception, or the self-giving of the actual present, which has its correlate in the given of what is past, is now confronted by another contrast, that of recollection, secondary remembrance. In recollection, a now “appears” to us, but it “appears” in a sense wholly other than the appearance of the now in perception.12 This now is not perceived, i.e., self-given, but presentified. It places a now before us which is not given. In just the same way, the running-off of a melody in recollection places before us a “just past,” but does not give it. In addition, every individual in mere phantasy is temporally extended in some way. It has its now, its before and after [sein vorher und Nachher], but like the whole Object, the now, before, and after are merely imagined. Here, therefore, it is a question of an entirely different concept of perception. Here, perception is an act which brings something other than itself before us, an act which primordially constitutes the Object. Presentification, re-presentation, as the act which does not place an Object itself before us, but just presentifies—places before us in images, as it were (if not precisely in the manner of true figurative consciousness)—, is just the opposite of this. There is no mention here of a continuous accommodation of perception to its opposite. Heretofore, consciousness of the past, i.e., the primary one, was not perception because perception was designated as the act originarily constituting the now. Consciousness of the past, however, does not constitute a now but rather a “just-having-been” [ein soeben gewesen] that intuitively precedes the now. However, if we call perception the act in which all “origination” lies, which constitutes originarily, then primary remembrance is perception. For only in primary remembrance do we see what is past; only in it is the past constituted, i.e., not in a representative but in a presentative way. The just-having-been, the before in contrast to the now, can be seen directly only in primary remembrance. It is the essence of primary remembrance to bring this new and unique moment to primary, direct intuition, just as it is the essence of the perception of the now to bring the now directly to intuition. On the other hand, recollection, like phantasy, offers us mere presentification. It is “as-if” the same consciousness as the temporarily creative acts of the now and the past, “as-if” the same but yet modified. The phantasied now represents a now, but does not give us a now itself; the phantasied before and after merely represents a before and after, etc.

§ 18. The Significance of Recollection for the Constitution of the Consciousness of Duration and Succession

The constitutive significance of primary and secondary remembrance is seen in a different light if, instead of the mode of givenness of enduring objectivities, we turn our attention to the mode of givenness of duration and succession themselves.

Let us suppose that A appears as a primal impression and endures for a while, and along with the retention of A in a certain level of development B appears and is constituted as enduring B. Therewith, during these “processes,” consciousness is consciousness of the same A “moving back into the past,” the same A in the flux of these modes of givenness, and the same according to the “duration” belonging to the form of being appropriate to its content according to all points of this duration. The same is true of B and of the difference of both durations or their temporal points. In addition to the above, however, something new enters here: B follows A. There is a succession of two continuing sets of data given with a determinate temporal form, a temporal interval which encompasses the succession. The consciousness of succession is an originary dator [gebendes] consciousness; it is the “perception” of this succession. We shall consider now the reproductive modification of this perception, that is, recollection. I “repeat” the consciousness of this succession: remembering, I presentify it to myself. This I “can” do, in fact, as “often as I like.” The presentification of a lived experience lies a priori within the sphere of my “freedom.” (The “I can” is a practical “I can” and not a “mere idea.”) Now what does the presentification of a lived experience look like and what belongs to its essence? One can say to begin with: I presentify to myself first A and then B. If I originally have A—B, now I have A′—B′ (the mark [′] indicates memory). But this is inadequate, for it implies that I now have a memory A′ and “afterward” a memory B′, namely, in the consciousness of a succession of these memories. But then I should have a “perception” of the succession of these memories and no consciousness of the memory of them. I must therefore exhibit this consciousness through (A—B)′. This consciousness, in fact, includes an A′, B′, and also a—. To be sure, the succession is not a third part, as if the manner of writing down the signs one after the other denoted the succession. Nevertheless, I can write down the law

(A—B)′ = A′—B′

meaning: there is present a consciousness of the memory of A and of B but also a modified consciousness of “B follows A.”

If, as regards the originary dator consciousness, we now ask for a succession of enduring Objectivities—and, indeed, for the duration itself—we find that retention and recollection necessarily belong thereto. Retention constitutes the living horizon of the now; I have in it a consciousness of the “just past.” But what is originarily constituted thereby—perhaps in the retaining of the tone just heard—is only the shoving back of the now-phase or the completed constituted duration, which in this completeness is no longer being constituted and no longer perceived. In “coincidence” with this “result” which is being shoved back, I can, however, undertake a reproduction. Then the pastness [Vergangenheit] of the duration is given to me simpliciter as just is the “re-givenness” [Wiedergegebenheit] of the duration. And it should be noted that it is only past durations that I can, in repeatable acts, “originarily” intuit, identify, and have objectively as the identical Object of many acts. I can re-live [nachleben] the present but it can never be given again. If I come back to one and the same succession (as I can at any time) and identify it as the same temporal Object, I carry out a succession of recollective lived experiences in the unity of an overlapping consciousness of succession thus:

(A—B)—(A—B)′—(A—B)″….

The question is: what is this act of identification like? To begin with, the succession is a succession of lived experiences—the first being the originary constitution of a succession A—B, the second a memory of this succession, then the same thing again, and so on. The entire succession is given originarily as presence [Präsenz]. I can again have a memory of this succession, another memory of such a recollection, and so on ad infinitum. Essentially, every memory is not only repeatable in the sense that higher levels are possible at will, but also it is repeated as a sphere of the “I can.”

What is the first recollection of that succession like? It is:

[(A—B)—(A—B)′]′

Then, according to the earlier law, I can deduce that therein is set (A—B)′ and [(A—B)′]′, therefore, a memory of the second level, that is, in the sequence, and naturally also the memory of the succession—′. If I repeat once again, I have still higher modifications of memory and at the same time the consciousness that in sequence I have again and again carried out a repeatable presentification. Such a thing takes place very often. I knock twice on the table and presentify the sequence to myself. Then I note that I first gave the succession perceptively and then remembered it. Then I note that I have accomplished just this noting, that is, as the third member of a series that I can repeat, etc. This is all very commonplace, especially in the phenomenological method of procedure.

In the succession of like Objects (identical as to content) which are given only in succession and never as coexisting, we have a peculiar coincidence in the unity of one consciousness. Naturally, this is meant only figuratively, for the Objects are indeed separated, known as a succession, divided by a temporal interval.

And yet, we have in the sequence unlike Objects, with like contrasted moments. Thus “lines of likeness,” as it were, run from one to the other, and in the case of similarity, lines of similarity. We have an interrelatedness which is not constituted in a relational mode of observation and which is prior to all “comparison” and all “thinking” as the necessary condition for all intuition of likeness and difference. Only the similar is really “comparable” and “difference” presupposes “coincidence,” i.e., that real union of the like bound together in transition (or in coexistence).

§ 19. The Difference between Retention and Reproduction (Primary and Secondary Remembrance or Phantasy)

By this time our position regarding Brentano’s theory that the origin of the apprehension of time lies in the sphere of phantasy is definitely determined. Phantasy is the mode of consciousness characterized as presentification (reproduction). Now, there is indeed such a thing as presentified time but it necessarily refers back to a primordially given time which is not phantasied but presented. Presentification is the opposite of the primordially giving act; no representation can arise from it. That is, phantasy is not a form of consciousness that can bring forth some kind of Objectivity or other, or an essential and possible tendency [Zug] toward an Objectivity as self-given. Not to be self-giving is precisely the essence of phantasy. Even the concept of phantasy does not arise from phantasy. For if we claim originarily to have given what phantasy is, then we must, of course, form phantasies, but this itself still does not mean givenness. We must naturally observe the process of phantasy, i.e., perceive it. The perception of phantasy is the primordially giving consciousness for the formation of the concept of phantasy. In this perception, we see what phantasy is; we grasp it in the consciousness of self-givenness.

That a great phenomenological difference exists between representifying memory and primary remembrance which extends the now-consciousness is revealed by a careful comparison of the lived experiences involved in both. We hear, let us say, two or three sounds and have during the temporal extension of the now a consciousness of the sound just heard. Evidently this consciousness is essentially the same whether out of the tonal configuration which forms the unity of a temporal Object a member is still really perceived as now, or whether this member no longer occurs, although we are still retentionally aware of the image. Let us assume now that it perhaps happens that while the continuous intention directed toward the sound or flow of the sound is still vivid, this same sound is reproduced once more. The measure which I have just heard and toward which my attention is still directed I presentify to myself in that inwardly I carry it out once more. The difference is obvious. In the presentification we now once more have the sound or sound-form together with its entire temporal extension. The act of presentification has exactly the same temporal extension as the earlier act of perception. The former reproduces the latter; it allows the passage to run off, tonal phase for tonal phase and interval for interval. It also reproduces thereby the phase of primary remembrance which we have singled out for the comparison. Nevertheless, the act of presentification is not a mere repetition and the difference does not merely consist in that at the one time we have a simple reproduction and at the other a reproduction of a reproduction. We find, rather, radical differences in content. They become apparent when, for example, we inquire what constitutes the difference between the sounding of the tone in the presentification and in the residual consciousness of it which we still retain in phantasy. The tone reproduced during the “sounding” is a reproduction of the sounding. The residual consciousness after the sounding has been reproduced is no longer a reproduction of the sounding but of the re-sounding [Er-klingens] which has just been but is still heard. This re-sounding is exhibited in an entirely different manner from that of the sounding itself. The phantasms which exhibit the tones do not remain in consciousness as if, for example, in the presentification each tone were constituted as an identical persisting datum. Otherwise, in presentification we could not have an intuitive idea of time, the idea of a temporal Object. The tone reproduced passes away; its phantasm does not remain identically the same, but is modified in a characteristic way and establishes the presentificational consciousness of duration, alteration, succession, and the like.

The modification of consciousness which changes an originary now into one that is reproduced is something wholly other than that modification which changes the now—whether originary or reproduced—into the past. This last modification has the character of a continuous shading-off; just as the now continuously grades off into the ever more distant past, so the intuitive consciousness of time also continuously grades off. On the other hand, we are not speaking here of a continuous transition of perception to phantasy, of impression to reproduction. The latter distinction is a separate one. We must say, therefore, that what we term originary consciousness, impression, or perception is an act which is continuously gradated. Every concrete perception implies a whole continuum of such gradations. Reproduction, phantasy-consciousness, also requires exactly the same gradations, although only reproductively modified. On both sides, it belongs to the essence of lived experiences that they must be extended in this fashion, that a punctual phase can never be for itself.

Naturally, the gradation of what is given originarily as well as of what is given reproductively indeed concerns the content of apprehension, as we have already seen. Perception is built upon sensations. Sensation which functions presentatively for the object forms a stable continuum, and in just the same way the phantasm forms a continuum for the representation [Repräsentation] of an Object of phantasy. Whoever assumes an essential difference between sensations and phantasms naturally may not claim the content of apprehension of the temporal phases just past to be phantasms, for these, of course, pass continually over into the content of apprehension of the moment of the now.

§ 20. The “Freedom” of Reproduction

In the originary and the reproductive running-off of “sinking-back” noteworthy differences appear. The originary appearing and passing away of the modes of running-off in appearance is something fixed, something of which we are conscious through “affection,” something we can only observe (if, in general, we achieve the spontaneity of such viewing). On the other hand, presentification is something free; it is a free running-through [Durchlaufen]. We can carry out the presentification “more quickly” or “more slowly,” clearly and explicitly or in a confused manner, quick as lightning at a stroke or in articulated steps, and so on. Presentification is thus itself an occurrence of internal consciousness and as such has its actual now, its modes of running-off, etc. And in the same immanent temporal interval in which the presentification really takes place, we can “in freedom” accommodate larger and smaller parts of the presentified event with its modes of running-off and consequently run through it more quickly or more slowly. Thereby, the relative modes of running-off (under the presupposition of a continuous identifying coincidence) of the points of the temporal interval presentified remain unchanged. I always presentify the same, always the same continuity of the modes of running-off of the temporal interval, always the continuity itself in its modal setting. But when I thus turn back, again and again, to the same beginning point and to the same succession of temporal points, the beginning point itself always sinks steadily ever further back.

§ 21. Levels of Clarity of Reproduction

Thus, what is presentified floats in consciousness in ways more or less clear, and the different modes of lack of clarity refer to the whole which is presentified and to its modes of consciousness. Also with respect to the originary givenness of a temporal Object we find that the Object first appears vividly and clearly and then, with diminishing clarity, goes over into emptiness. These modifications belong to the flux, but while they appear even in the presentification of the flux, still other obscurities confront us, namely, the “clear” (in the first sense) appears as seen through a veil—unclear now and then, that is, more or less unclear, and so forth. Therefore, the two types of lack of clarity are not to be confused. The specific modes of vividness and lack of vividness, of clarity and lack of clarity of the presentification do not belong to what is presentified, or belong to it only by virtue of the modality of the presentification. They belong to the actual lived experience of the presentification.

§ 22. The Certainty of Reproduction

A difference worthy of note also exists with respect to the certainty of primary and secondary remembrance.13 What I am retentionally aware of, we say, is absolutely certain. What about the more distant past then? If I remember something which I experienced yesterday, then I reproduce the occurrence, if necessary, following all the steps of the succession. While I am doing this, I am conscious of a sequence; one step is first reproduced, then, in definite sequence, the second, and so on. But apart from this sequence, which evidently belongs to the reproduction as the present flow of lived experience, the reproduction brings about the presentation of a temporal flow which is past. And it is entirely possible not only that the individual steps of the occurrence made present through memory deviate from those of the actual past event (that they did not happen as they are now presentified), but also that the real order of succession was other than the order of succession as recollected. It is here, therefore, that errors are possible, errors, that is, which arise from the reproduction as such and are not to be confused with the errors to which the perception of temporal Objects (namely, of transcendent Objects) is also subject. That this is the case and in what sense this is the case have already been mentioned. If I have been originarily conscious of a temporal succession, it is indubitable that a temporal succession has taken place and takes place. But this is not to say that an (Objective) event really takes place in the sense in which I apprehend it. The individual apprehensions can be wrong, corresponding to no reality. And if the Objective intention of what is apprehended remains in the mode of being shoved back in time [zeitlichen Zurückgeschobenheit] (with regard to the constitutive content of what is apprehended and its relation to other objects), the error interpenetrates the entire temporal apprehension of the occurrence which appears. However, if we limit ourselves to the succession of the exhibitive “contents” or of the “appearances” also, an indubitable truth remains: an event has attained givenness, and this succession of appearances has come into existence, even though, perhaps, not the succession of incidents which appears to me.

The question is now whether this certainty of temporal consciousness can be retained in reproduction. This is possible only by means of a coincidence of the reproductive flow with a retentional one. If I have a succession of two notes, C, D, I can, while the memory is still fresh, repeat this succession, in fact, in certain respects, repeat it adequately. I repeat C, D inwardly, being conscious that first C and then D has occurred. And while this consciousness is “still vivid,” I can do the same thing again, etc. Undoubtedly, I can in this way go beyond the primordial sphere of certainty. At the same time, we see here the way in which recollection takes place. When I repeat C, D, this reproductive representation of the succession finds its realization in the still vivid earlier succession.14

§ 23. The Coincidence of the Now Reproduced with a Past Now—The Distinction between Phantasy and Recollection

After we have contrasted the reproductive consciousness of what is past with the originary, a further problem arises. When I reproduce a melody that I have heard, the phenomenal now of the recollection presentifies something past. In phantasy, in recollection, a tone sounds now. It reproduces the first tone, perchance of the melody which is past. The consciousness of the past given with the second tone reproduces the “just past” that was originarily given earlier, therefore, a past “just past.” But how does the reproduced now come to represent something past? A reproduced now certainly places a now immediately before us. Whence comes then the reference to something past, which can still be given originarily only in the form of the “just past”?

To answer this question it is necessary to undertake an analysis which, up to now, we have only touched upon, namely, that regarding the difference between the mere phantasy of a temporally extended Object and recollection. In mere phantasy there is no positing of the reproduced now and no coincidence of this now with one given in the past. Recollection, on the other hand, posits what is reproduced and gives it a position with regard to the actual now and the sphere of the originary temporal field to which the recollection itself belongs.15 Only in the originary consciousness of time can the connection between a reproduced now and a past be effected. The flux of presentification is a flux of phases of lived experiences constructed exactly like every other temporally constitutive flux and, therefore, is itself temporally constitutive. All the shadings and modifications which constitute the form of time are found here and just as the immanent sound is constituted in the flux of tonal phases, so the unity of the presentification of the sound is constituted in the flux of the presentification of the tonal phases. It is certainly generally true that in phenomenological reflection all appearances, imaginings, thoughts, etc., in the broadest sense, lead us back to a flux of constitutive phases which undergo an immanent Objectivation, even the memories, expectations, wishes, etc., belonging to appearances of perception (external perceptions) as unities of internal consciousness. Therefore, presentifications of every kind such as the flow of lived experiences of the universal, temporally constitutive form also constitute an immanent Object: the “enduring, thus and thus flowing process of presentification.”

On the other hand, presentifications have the unique property that in themselves and according to all phases of lived experience they are presentifications in another sense, namely, that they have a second intentionality of another sort, one peculiar to them and not characteristic of all lived experiences. This new intentionality has the peculiarity that, as regards its form, it is a counter-image [Gegenbild] of the temporally constitutive intentionality, and, like this intentionality, reproduces in every element a moment of a flux of the present, and in totality a total flux of the present. Thus it sets up a reproductive consciousness of a presentified immanent Object. This new intentionality constitutes, therefore, something twofold. First, through its form of the flux of lived experience, it constitutes presentification as immanent unity, and does so in such a way that the moments of the lived experience of this flux are reproductive modifications of the moments of a parallel flux (which in the usual case consists of non-reproductive moments). Second, it constitutes presentification in another way, such that these reproductive modifications signify an intentionality; the flux is knit together into a constitutive whole in which we are conscious of an intentional unity, the unity of the remembered.

§ 24. Protentions in Recollection

In order now to understand the disposition of this constituted unity of lived experience, “memory,” in the undivided stream of lived experience, the following must be taken into account: every act of memory contains intentions of expectation whose fulfillment leads to the present. Every primordially constitutive process is animated by protentions which voidly [leer] constitute and intercept [auffangen] what is coming, as such, in order to bring it to fulfillment. However, the recollective process not only renews these protentions in a manner appropriate to memory. These protentions were not only present as intercepting, they have also intercepted. They have been fulfilled, and we are aware of them in recollection. Fulfillment in recollective consciousness is re-fulfillment [Wieder-Erfüllung] (precisely in the modification of the positing of memory), and if the primordial protention of the perception of the event was undetermined and the question of being-other or not-being was left open, then in the recollection we have a pre-directed expectation which does not leave all that open. It is then in the form of an “incomplete” recollection whose structure is other than that of the undetermined, primordial protention. And yet this is also included in the recollection. There are difficulties here, therefore, with regard to the intentional analysis both for the event considered individually, and, in a different way, for the analysis of expectations which concern the succession of events up to the actual present. Recollection is not expectation; its horizon, which is a posited one, is, however, oriented on the future, that is, the future of the recollected. As the recollective process advances, this horizon is continually opened up anew and becomes richer and more vivid. In view of this, the horizon is filled with recollected events which are always new. Events which formerly were only foreshadowed are now quasi-present, seemingly in the mode of the embodied present.

§ 25. The Double Intentionality of Recollection

If, in the case of a temporal Object, we distinguish the content together with its duration (which in connection with “the” time can have a different place) from its temporal position, we have in the reproduction of an enduring being, and in addition to the reproduction of the filled duration, the intentions which affect the position, in fact, necessarily affect it. A duration is not imaginable, or better, is not positable unless it is posited in a temporal nexus, unless the intentions of the temporal nexus are there. Hence it is necessary that these intentions take the form of either past or future intentions. To the duality of the intentions which are oriented on the fulfilled duration and on its temporal position corresponds a dual fulfillment. The entire complex of intuitions which makes up the appearance of past enduring Objects has its possible fulfillment in the system of appearances which belong to the same enduring thing. The intentions of the temporal nexus are fulfilled through the establishment of the fulfilled nexuses up to the actual present. In every presentification, therefore, we must distinguish between the reproduction of the consciousness in which the past enduring Object was given, i.e., perceived or in general primordially constituted, and that consciousness which attaches to this reproduction as constitutive for the consciousness of “past,” “present” (coincident with the actual now), and “future.”

Now is this last also reproduction? This is a question which can easily lead one astray. Naturally, the whole is reproduced, not only the then present of consciousness with its flux but “implicitly” the whole stream of consciousness up to the living present. This means that as an essential a priori phenomenological formation [Genese] memory is in a continuous flux because conscious life is in constant flux and is not merely fitted member by member into the chain. Rather, everything new reacts on the old; its forward-moving intention is fulfilled and determined thereby, and this gives the reproduction a definite coloring. An a priori, necessary retroaction is thus revealed here. The new points again to the new, which, entering, is determined and modifies the reproductive possibilities for the old, etc. Thereby the retroactive power of the chain goes back, for the past as reproduced bears the character of the past and an indeterminate intention toward a certain state of affairs in regard to the now. It is not true, therefore, that we have a mere chain of “associated” intentions, one after the other, this one suggesting the next (in the stream). Rather, we have an intention which in itself is an intention toward the series of possible fulfillments.

But this intention is a non-intuitive, an “empty” intention, and its objectivity is the Objective temporal series of events, this series being the dim surroundings of what is actually recollected. Can we not characterize the non-general “surroundings” as a unitary intention which is based on a multiplicity of interconnected objectivities and in which a discrete and manifold givenness comes gradually to fulfillment? Such is also the case with the spatial background. And so also, everything in perception has its reverse side as background (for it is not a question of the background of attention but of apprehension). The component “unauthentic perception” which belongs to every transcendent perception as an essential element is a “complex” intention which can be fulfilled in nexuses of a definite kind, in nexuses of data.

The foreground is nothing without the background; the appearing side is nothing without the non-appearing. It is the same with regard to the unity of time-consciousness—the duration reproduced is the foreground; the classifying intentions make us aware of a background, a temporal background. And in certain ways, this is continued in the constitution of the temporality of the enduring thing itself with its now, before, and after. We have the following analogies: for the spatial thing, the ordering into the surrounding space and the spatial world on the one side, and on the other, the spatial thing itself with its foreground and background. For the temporal thing, we have the ordering into the temporal form and the temporal world on the one side, and on the other the temporal thing itself and its changing orientation with regard to the living now.

§ 26. The Difference between Memory and Expectation

We must further investigate whether memory and expectation equal each other. Intuitive remembrance offers me the vivid reproduction of the expiring duration of an event, and only the intentions which refer back to the before and forward to the living now remain unintuitive.

In the intuitive idea of a future event, I now have intuitively the productive “image” of a process which runs off reproductively. Joined thereto are indeterminate intentions of the future and of the past, i.e., intentions which from the beginning of the process affect the temporal surroundings which terminate in the living now. To that extent, expectational intuition is an inverted memorial intuition, for the now-intentions do not go “before” the process but follow after it. As empty environmental intentions, they lie “in the opposite direction.” How do matters stand now with the mode of givenness of the process itself? Does it make any essential difference that in memory the content of the process is determinate? Moreover, the memory can be intuitive but still not very determinate, inasmuch as many intuitive components by no means have real memorial character. With “perfect” memory, to be sure, everything would be clear to the last particular and properly characterized as memory. But, ideally, this is also possible with expectation. In general, expectation lets much remain open, and this remaining-open is again a characteristic of the components concerned. But, in principle, a prophetic consciousness (a consciousness which gives itself out as prophetic) is conceivable, one in which each character of the expectation, of the coming into being, stands before our eyes, as, for example, when we have a precisely determined plan and, intuitively imagining what is planned, accept it lock, stock, and barrel, so to speak, as future reality. Still there will also be many unimportant things in the intuitive anticipation of the future which as makeshifts fill out the concrete image. The latter, however, can in various ways be other than the likeness it offers. It is, from the first, characterized as being open.

The principal differences between memory and expectation, however, are to be found in the manner of fulfillment. Intentions of the past are necessarily fulfilled by the establishment of nexuses of intuitive reproductions. The reproduction of past events permits, with respect to their validity (in internal consciousness) only the confirmation of the uncertainties of memory and their improvement by being transformed in a reproduction in which each and everything in the components is characterized as reproductive. Here we are concerned with such questions as: Have I really seen or perceived this? Have I really had this appearance with exactly this content? All this must at the same time dovetail into a context of similar intuitions up to the now. Another question, to be sure, is the following: Was the appearing thing real? On the other hand, expectation finds its fulfillment in a perception. It pertains to the essence of the expected that it is an about-to-be-perceived. In view of this, it is evident that if what is expected makes its appearance, i.e., becomes something present, the expectational situation itself has gone by. If the future has become the present, then the present has changed to the relatively past. The situation is the same with regard to environmental intentions. They are also fulfilled through the actuality of an impressional living experience.

Notwithstanding these differences, expectational intuition is something primordial and unique exactly as is intuition of the past.

§ 27. Memory as Consciousness of Having-Been-Perceived

What follows is of the greatest significance with regard to the characterization of the positing reproductions which have been analyzed. What pertains to their essence is not the mere reproductive positing of temporal being but a certain relation to internal consciousness. It belongs primarily to the essence of memory that it is consciousness of having-been-perceived. If I intuitively remember an external process, I have a reproductive intuition of it. And it is a positing reproduction. We are necessarily cognizant of this external reproduction, however, by means of an internal reproduction.16 An external appearing in which the external process is given in a determinate mode of appearance must indeed be reproduced. The external appearance as a lived experience is unity of internal consciousness, and internal reproduction conforms to internal consciousness. However, there are two possibilities for the reproduction of a process. It can be a positing internal reproduction, and, accordingly, the appearance of the process can be posited in the unity of immanent time, or it can also be a positing external reproduction which posits the temporal process concerned in Objective time, but does not posit the appearance itself as a process of internal time, and hence, further, does not posit the temporally constitutive stream in the unity of the common life-stream.

Memory, therefore, is not necessarily memory of an earlier perception. However, since the memory of an earlier process includes the reproduction of appearances in which the process came to be given, there is always the possibility of a memory of the earlier perception of the process (in other words, the possibility of a reflection in the memory which brings the earlier perception to a state of givenness). The earlier complex of consciousness is reproduced and what is reproduced has both the character of reproduction and the character of the past.

Let us make these relations clear by means of an example. I remember a lighted theater—this cannot mean that I remember having perceived the theater. Otherwise, this would imply that I remember that I have perceived, that I perceived the theater, and so on. I remember the lighted theater; this means that “in my internal consciousness” I see the lighted theater as having been. In the now, I behold the not-now. Perception constitutes the present. In order that a now as such may stand before me, I must perceive. In order to intuitively represent a now, I must effect a perception “in an image” representatively modified. Not in such a way, however, that I represent the perception; rather, I represent what is perceived, i.e., what appears as being present in the perception. The memory really implies, therefore, a reproduction of the earlier perception, but the memory is not in the true sense a representation of the perception. The perception is not meant and posited in the memory. What is meant and posited in the memory is the object of the perception together with its now, which last, moreover, is posited in relation to the actual now. I remember the lighted theater of yesterday, i.e., I effect a “reproduction” of the perception of the theater. Accordingly, the theater hovers before me in the representation as something actually present. I mean this, but at the same time I apprehend this present as lying back in reference to the actual present of perceptions now extant. Naturally, it is now evident that the perception of the theater was; I have perceived the theater. What is remembered appears as having been present, that is, immediately and intuitively. And it appears in such a way that a present intuitively appears which is at an interval from the present of the actual now. The latter present is constituted in the actual perception. The intuitively appearing present, the intuitive representation of the not-now, is constituted in a counter-image of perception, in a “presentification of the earlier perception” in which the theater comes to be given “as if now.” This presentification of the perception of the theater is therefore not to be understood as if it were a re-living of the perception. What I intend in the presentification, rather, is the being-present of the perceived Object.

§ 28. Memory and Figurative Consciousness—Memory as Positing Reproduction

Still to be considered is the kind of presentification in question here. It is not a matter of a representation by means of a similar Object, as in the case of a conscious imitation (a painting, bust, or the like). In contrast to this figurative consciousness, reproductions have the character of self-presentification in the sense of what is past. Present memory is a phenomenon wholly analogous to perception. It has the appearance of the object in common with the corresponding perception. However, in the case of memory the appearance has a modified character, by virtue of which the object stands forth not as present but as having been present.

What is essential to the modes of reproduction termed memory and expectation lies in the disposition of the reproduced appearances in the nexus of being of internal time, of the flowing succession of my lived experiences. Normally, the act of positing is extended also to what is objective in external appearance, but this positing can be suspended; it can be contradicted. Even in this case, memory or expectation still remains, i.e., we do not cease calling something like that memory or expectation even if we denote an earlier perception or one to come as merely “supposed.” If, from the first, it is a matter not of the reproduction of transcendent but of immanent Objects, then the stages of the formation of reproductive intuitions described drop out, and the positing of what is reproduced coincides with its disposition in the series of lived experiences in immanent time.

§ 29. Memory of the Present

With regard to the sphere of the intuition of external time and objectivity there is yet another type of immediate reproductive intuition of temporal objects to be considered. (Indeed, all our explanations are restricted to the immediate intuition of temporal objects, and the question of mediate or non-intuitive expectations and memories is left alone.)

Whether on the basis of earlier perceptions or on the basis of a description, etc., I can also represent to myself something present as now existing without having it now embodied before me. In the first case, I certainly have a memory, but to what is remembered I grant duration up to the actual now, and for this duration I have no internal, remembered “appearances.” The “memory-image” serves me, but I do not posit what is remembered as such, what is objective in the internal memory, in the duration proper to it. What is posited is the enduring as the self-exhibiting in this appearance. We posit the appearing now and the ever-fresh now, etc., but we do not posit it as “past.”

We know that the “past” in the case of memory also does not imply that in the present act of remembrance we form an image of the earlier one and others of like construction. Rather, we simply posit the appearing, the intuited, which in conformity with its temporality is naturally intuitable only in modes of temporality. And to what appears thereby we give, in the mode of remembrance and by means of environmental intentions, position with regard to the now of actuality. Therefore, with the presentification of an absent present thing [abwesenden Gegenwärtigen] we must also inquire about the environmental intentions of the intuition, and these are here naturally of a wholly different kind. They have no reference at all to the actual now through a continuous series of internal appearances which were posited jointly. To be sure, this reproductive memory is not without correlation. It is supposed to be an enduring thing which there appears, which has been, now is, and will be. Somehow or other, therefore, I can go there and see, still find the thing, and can then go back again and in repeated “possible” trains of memory establish the intuition. And if I had set out just before and had gone there (and this is an indicated possibility with which possible memory-trains accord) then I should now have this intuition as a perceptual intuition, etc. Therefore the appearance which hovers before me reproductively is certainly not characterized as having been internally impressional. What appears is not characterized as having been perceived in its temporal duration, although a reference to the hic et nunc also exists here. The appearance also bears a certain positing character; it belongs in a determinate nexus of appearances (that is, of appearances which are “positing,” position-taking, through and through), and in reference to those it has a motivating character. The environmental intention always produces for the “possible” appearances themselves a halo of intentions. Such also is the case with the intuition of enduring being. I now perceive this being and posit it as having been before without having perceived it before and remembering it now. In addition, I posit it as continuing to be in the future.

§ 30. The Preservation of the Objective [gegenständlichen] Intention in the Retentional Modification

It often happens that while the retention of something just past is still vivid, a reproductive image of it appears—naturally, an image of the thing as it was given in the now-point. We recapitulate, so to speak, what has just been lived and experienced. This internal renewal in presentification sets the reproductive now in relation with the now still living in recent memory. In this way, the consciousness of identity which sets forth the identity of the one or the other comes about. (At the same time, this phenomenon shows that, in addition to the intuitive, a void part which extends very much further belongs in the sphere of primary remembrance. While we still retain something that has been [ein Gewesenes], in the fresh, although empty, memory an “image” of this thing can also emerge.) It is a universal and basically essential fact that every now as it sinks into the past maintains its strict identity. Phenomenologically speaking, the now-consciousness that is constituted on the basis of a content A changes continuously to a consciousness of the past, while at the same time an ever new now-consciousness is built up. With this transformation (and this is part of the essence of time-consciousness) the self-modifying consciousness preserves its objective intention.

The continuous modification which every primordial temporal field includes with respect to the character of the act which constitutes it is not to be understood as if, in the series of apprehensions belonging to an Object-phase, a continuous modification took place in the objective intention beginning from the appearance of the apprehensions as now-positing and descending even to the last accessible phenomenal moment of the past. On the contrary, the objective intention remains absolutely the same and identical. Nevertheless, a self-gradating exists and, in fact, not merely with respect to the content of apprehension, which has its diminution, a certain falling off from the greatest peak of sensation in the now to the point of imperceptibility. Above all, the now-moment is characterized as the new. The now, just sinking away, is no longer the new, but that which is shoved aside by the new. In this being-shoved-aside lies an alteration. But while the now which has been shoved aside has lost its now-character, it maintains itself in its objective intention absolutely unaltered. It is intention toward an individual Objectivity, specifically, an intuiting intention. In this respect, therefore, there is no alteration whatsoever. However, it would be wise to consider here what “the preservation of the objective intention” means. The complete apprehension of an object contains two components: the one constitutes the Object according to its extra-temporal determinations; the other creates the temporal position: being-now, having-been, and so on. The Object as temporal matter [Zeitmaterie], as that which has temporal position and temporal extensity, as that which endures or is altered, as that which now is and then has been, springs solely from the Objectivation of the contents of apprehension—in the case of sensible Objects, therefore, from the sensible contents. Nevertheless, we must not lose sight of the fact that these contents are temporal Objects, that they are generated in a succession as a continuum of primal impressions and retentions, and that these temporal shadings of the data of sensation have their significance for the temporal determinations of the Objects constituted by means of them. However, their temporal character is of no importance with regard to their nature as representatives of material qualities according to their quiddity [Was]. The non-temporally grasped data of apprehension constitute the Object according to its specific state, and where this is preserved we can certainly speak of an identity. However, if heretofore we spoke of the preservation of the objective reference, this implies that the object is maintained not only in its specific state but also as individual, therefore as something temporally determined which sinks back with its temporal determination in time. This sinking back is a peculiar phenomenological modification of the consciousness whereby in relation to the ever newly constituted actual now an ever increasing interval is built up by means of the continuous series of alterations leading to that end.

§ 31. Primal Impressions and Objective [objektiver] Individual Temporal Points

Seemingly, we have been led here to an antinomy. The Object, in sinking back, constantly alters its temporal position, and yet in sinking back is said to preserve its temporal position. In truth, however, the Object of primary remembrance constantly being shoved back does not alter its temporal position but only its interval from the actual now, specifically, because the actual now is accepted as an ever new Objective temporal point, whereas the past temporal thing remains what it is. But the question now is, how does it happen that, despite the phenomenon of the continuous alteration of the consciousness of time, there is the consciousness of Objective time, and above all the consciousness of identical temporal positions? Very closely bound to this is the question of the constitution of the Objectivity of individual temporal objects and processes. All Objectification takes place in time-consciousness, and without a clarification of the identity of temporal position no clarification of the identity of an Object in time can be given.

Stated more precisely, the problem is the following: The now-phases of perception constantly undergo a modification. They are not preserved simply as they are. They flow. Constituted therein is what we have referred to as sinking back in time. The tone sounds now and immediately sinks into the past, as the same tone. This affects the tone in each of its phases and, therefore, the whole tone also. Now, through our previous observations, this sinking away is, in some measure, comprehensible. But how is it that despite the sinking away of the tone, we still say, as our analysis of reproductive consciousness has shown, that it has a fixed position in time, that temporal points and temporal positions may be identified in repeated acts? The tone, as well as every temporal point in the unity of the enduring tone, indeed has its absolutely fixed place in “Objective” (or even in immanent) time. Time is motionless and yet it flows. In the flow of time, in the continuous sinking away into the past, there is constituted a nonflowing, absolutely fixed, identical Objective time. This is the problem.

Let us first consider somewhat more closely the state of affairs with regard to the sinking away of the same tone. Why do we say it is the same tone which sinks away? The tone is built up in a temporal flux through its phases. Of every phase, that of an actual now, for example, we know that although subject to the law of constant modification, it still must appear as objectively the same, as the same tonal point, so to speak. This is true because a continuity of apprehension is present here which is governed by the identity of sense and exists in continuous coincidence. This coincidence concerns the extra-temporal matter which even in flux preserves the identity of the objective sense. This holds true for every now-phase. But every new now is precisely that, a new one, and is phenomenologically characterized as such. Even if every tone continues completely unaltered, in such a way that not the least alteration is visible to us—even if every new now, therefore, possesses exactly the same content of apprehension as regards moments of quality, intensity, and the like, and carries exactly the same apprehension—nevertheless, a primordial difference still exists, one which pertains to a new dimension. And this difference is a constant one. From the point of view of phenomenology, only the now-point is characterized as an actual now, that is, as new. The previous temporal point has undergone its modification, the one before that a continuing modification, etc. This continuum of modifications in the content of apprehension and the apprehensions based thereon produce the consciousness of the extension of the tone with the continuous sinking down into the past of what is already extended.

But despite the phenomenon of the continuous alteration of time-consciousness, how does the consciousness of Objective time and, above all, of identical temporal place and temporal extension come about? The answer is that in contrast to the flux resulting from being shoved back in time, i.e., the flux of modifications of consciousness, the Object which appears to be shoved back remains preserved even in absolute identity, that is, the Object together with the positing as a “this” experienced in the now-point. The continuous modification of apprehension in the constant flux does not affect the “as what” of the apprehension, i.e., the sense. It intends no new Object or Object-phase; it yields no new temporal point, but always the same Object with the same temporal points. Every actual now creates a new temporal point because it creates a new Object, or rather a new Object-point which is held fast in the flux of modifications as one and the same individual Object-point. And the constancy in which again and again a new now is constituted shows us that in general it is not a question of “novelty” but of a constant moment of individuation, in which the temporal position has its origin. It is part of the essence of the modifying flux that this temporal position stands forth as identical and necessarily identical. The now as the actual now is the givenness of the actual present of the temporal position. As a phenomenon moves into the past, the now acquires the character of a past now. It remains the same now, however. Only in relation to the momentarily actual and temporally new now does it stand forth as past.

The Objectivation of temporal Objects rests, therefore, on the following moments. The content of sensation which belongs to the different actual now-points of the Objects can qualitatively remain absolutely unaltered, but even with so far-reaching an identity with regard to content it still does not have true identity. The same sensation now and in another now has a difference, in fact, a phenomenological difference which corresponds to the absolute temporal position. This difference is the primal source of the individuality of the “this” and therewith of the absolute temporal position. Every phase of the modification has “in essence” the same qualitative content and the same temporal moment, although modified. Furthermore, each phase has in itself the same temporal moment in such a way that precisely by means of it the subsequent apprehension of identity is made possible: this on the side of sensation, or of the foundation of apprehension. The different moments sustain different parts of the apprehension, of the true Objectivation. One aspect of the Objectivation finds its support purely in the qualitative content of the material of sensation. This yields the temporal matter, e.g., the sound. This matter is held identically in the flux of the modification of the past. A second aspect of the Objectivation arises from the apprehension of the representatives of the temporal positions [Zeitstellenrepräsentanten]. This apprehension is also continuously retained in the flux of modification.

To recapitulate: the tonal point in its absolute individuality is retained in its matter and temporal position, the latter first constituting individuality. To this must be added, finally, apprehension which belongs essentially to the modification and which, while retaining the extended objectivity with its immanent absolute time, allows the continuous shoving-back into the past to appear. In our example of the sound, therefore, each temporal point of the ever fresh sounding and dying away has its material of sensation and its Objectifying apprehension. The sound stands forth as the sound, e.g., of a violin string that is bowed. If we again disregard the Objectifying apprehension and consider only the material of sensation, then, according to its matter, it is always precisely the same note C with its tonal quality and timbre unaltered, its intensity fluctuating, perhaps, and so on. This content, purely as the content of sensation, as it underlies the Objectifying apprehension, is extended, that is, every now has its content, even though materially it may be exactly the same. Absolutely the same C now and later is alike, according to experience, but individually it is other.

The term “individual” here refers to the primordial temporal form of sensation, or, as I can also say, to the temporal form of primordial sensation, here the sensation of the actual now-point and only this. Essentially, however, the now-point itself is to be defined through primordial sensation so that the expressed proposition has to be accepted only as an indication of what is meant. An impression, in contrast to a phantasm, is distinguished by the character of originarity.17 Now, within the sphere of impressions we must lay stress on primal impressions, which, over against the continuum of modifications, are present in the consciousness of primary remembrance. Primal impressions are absolutely unmodified, the primal source of all further consciousness and being. Primal impressions have for content what is signified by the word now, insofar as it is taken in the strictest sense; every new now is the content of a new primal impression. Constantly, a new and ever new impression flares up with ever new matter, now the same, now changing. What separates primal impression from primal impression is the individualizing moment of the primordial impression of temporal positions, which moment is basically different from the moment of quality and the other moments of the content of sensation. The moment of primordial temporal position naturally is nothing for itself. Individuation is nothing in addition to what has individuation. The entire now-point, the whole originary impression, undergoes the modification of the past, and through the latter we have first exhausted the complete concept of the now so far as it is a relative one and points to a “past,” as “past” points to the “now.” In addition, this modification, to begin with, affects the sensation without nullifying its universal, impressional character. It modifies the total content of the primal impression both in its matter and its temporal position. It modifies in exactly the sense that a modification of phantasy does, namely, modifying through and through and yet not altering the intentional essence (the total content).

Therefore, the matter is the same matter, the temporal position the same temporal position; only the mode of givenness has been changed. It is givenness of the past. On this material of sensation is erected the entire Objectifying apperception. Even if we merely glance at the content of sensation (disregarding transcendent apperceptions which sometimes are founded thereon) we effect a perception: the “temporal flux.” Duration is then before us as a mode of objectivity. Objectivity [Gegenständlichkeit] presupposes consciousness of unity, consciousness of identity. Here we grasp the content of every primal sensation as individual [Selbst]. This sensation gives an individual tonal point, and this individual point is identically the same in the flux of the modification of the past. The apperception relative to this point remains, in the modification of the past, in constant coincidence, and the identity of this individual is eo ipso identity of the temporal position. The continuous springing forth of ever new primal impressions ever and again produces, in the apprehension of these impressions as individual points, new and distinct temporal positions. This continuity produces a continuity of temporal positions. In the flux of modifications of the past, therefore, a continuous, tone-filled segment of time [Zeitstück] is present, but in such a way that only a point of this segment is given by means of the primal impression, and from that point on, temporal positions continuously appear in a modified gradation going back into the past.

Every perceived time is perceived as a past which terminates in the present, the present being a boundary-point. Every apprehension, no matter how transcendent it otherwise may be, is bound to this regularity. If we perceive a flight of birds, a squadron of cavalry at a gallop, and the like, we find the described distinctions in the underlying basis of sensation—ever new primal sensations, their temporal character, which provides their individuation, being carried with them; and on the other side, we find the same modes in the apprehension. Precisely by this means, the Objective itself appears, the flight of birds as primal givenness in the now-point, as complete givenness, though in a continuum of the past which terminates in the now, while the continuously preceding in the continuum of the past is moved ever further back. The appearing event always has the identical, absolute temporal value. Since, following the segment of time that has expired, the event is shoved ever further back into the past, it is shoved back with its absolute temporal position and hence with its entire temporal interval into the past, i.e., the same event with the same absolute temporal extensity continually appears (as long as it appears at all) as identically the same. Only the form of its givenness is different. On the other hand, in the living source-point of the now there also wells up ever fresh primal being, in relation to which the distance from the actual now of the temporal points belonging to the event is constantly increased. Accordingly, the appearance of sinking back, of withdrawing, arises.

§ 32. The Part of Reproduction in the Constitution of the One Objective [objektiven] Time

With the preservation of the individuality of the temporal points in their sinking back into the past, we still do not have, however, consciousness of a unitary, homogeneous, Objective time. In the occurrence of this consciousness, reproductive memory (in its intuitive capacity, as in the form of empty intentions) plays an important role. Every temporal point which has been shoved back can, by means of reproductive memory, be made the null-point of an intuition of time and be repeated. The earlier temporal field, in which what is presently shoved back was a now, is reproduced, and the reproduced now is identified with the temporal point still vivid in recent memory. The individual intention is the same.18 The temporal field that is reproduced extends further than that actually present. If we take a point of the past in this temporal field, the reproduction, by being shoved along with the temporal field in which this point was the now, provides a further regress into the past, and so on. Theoretically, this process is to be thought of as capable of being continued without limit, although in practice actual memory soon breaks down. It is evident that every temporal point has its before and after, and that the points and intervals coming before cannot be compressed in the manner of an approximation to a mathematical limit, as, let us say, the limit of intensity. If there were such a boundary-point, there would correspond to it a now which nothing preceded, and this is obviously impossible.¹⁹ A now is always and essentially the edge-point [Randpunkt] of an interval of time. And it is evident that this entire interval must sink back and thereby its entire magnitude, its entire individuality, is preserved. To be sure, phantasy and reproduction do not make possible an extension of the intuition of time in the sense that the extent of the real, given temporal gradations in simultaneous consciousness is increased. With reference to this, one may perhaps ask: How, with this successive stringing together of temporal fields, does the one Objective time with the one fixed order come to be? The answer proffers the continuous shoving along of the temporal fields, which in truth is no mere temporal stringing together of temporal fields. The segments being shoved along are individually identified in connection with the intuitively continuous regress into the past. If, starting from any actual lived and experienced temporal point—i.e., any one which is originarily given in the temporal field of perception or one which reproduces a distant past—we go back into the past, along, so to speak, a well-established chain of Objectivities which are interconnected and always identified, then the question arises: How is the linear order there established? In such an order every temporal interval, no matter which—even the external continuity with the actual temporal field reproduced—must be a part of a unique chain, continuing to the point of the actual now. Even every arbitrarily phantasied time is subject to the requirement that if one is able to think of it as real time (i.e., as the time of any temporal Object) it must subsist as an interval within the one and unique Objective time.

§ 33. Some A priori Temporal Laws

Obviously, this a priori requirement is grounded in the recognition of the immediately comprehensible and fundamental temporal certainties which become evident on the basis of intuitions of the data of temporal position.

If, to begin with, we compare two primal sensations, or correlatively two primal data, both really appearing in one consciousness as now, then they are distinguished from one another through their matter. They are, however, simultaneous; they have identically the same temporal position; they are both now, and in the same now they necessarily have the same value with regard to temporal position.20 They have the same form of individuation and both are constituted in impressions which belong to the same impressional level. These data are modified in this identity and always retain it in the modification of the past. A primal datum and a modified datum of like or dissimilar content necessarily have different temporal positions—the same if they arise from the same now-point, different if from different now-points. The actual now is a now and constitutes a temporal position. No matter how many Objectivities are constituted separately in the now, they all have the same temporal present and retain their simultaneity in flowing off. That the temporal positions have differences, that these are magnitudes, and the like, can here be seen as evident. Also evident are additional truths such as the law of transitivity, namely, the law that if A is earlier than B then B is later than A. It is part of the a priori essence of time that the latter is sometimes identified with a continuity of temporal positions, sometimes with the changing Objectivities which fill it; and that the homogeneity of absolute time is necessarily constituted in the flow of the modifications of the past and in the continual welling-forth of a now, of the creative temporal point, of the source-point of temporal positions in general.

Furthermore, it belongs to the a priori essence of the state of affairs that sensation, apprehension, position-taking, all share in the same temporal flux and that Objectified absolute time is necessarily the same as the time which belongs to sensation and apprehension. Pre-Objectified time, which pertains to sensation, necessarily founds the unique possibility of an Objectivation of temporal positions which corresponds to the modification of the sensation and the degree of this modification. To the Objectified temporal point in which, let us say, a peal of bells begins, corresponds the temporal point of the matching sensation. In the beginning phase, the sensation has the same time, i.e., if subsequently it is made into an object, it necessarily maintains the temporal position which coincides with the corresponding temporal position of the bell-peal. In the same way, the time of the perception and the time of the perceived are necessarily the same.21 The act of perception sinks back in time in the same way as the perceived in the appearance, and in reflection each phase of the perception must be given identically the same temporal position as the perceived.

6. “Psychische Präsenzeit,” Zeitschrift für Psychologie, Vol. XIII (1897), pp. 325ff. Cf. also W. Stern, Psychologie der Veränderungsaufassung (1898).

7. It is tempting to draw a parallel between these modes of the consciousness and appearance of temporal Objects and the modes in which a spatial thing appears and is known with changing orientation, to pursue further the “temporal orientations” in which spatial things (which are also temporal Objects) appear. Yet, for the time being, we shall remain in the immanent sphere.

8. No notice is taken in the diagram of the limitation of the temporal field. No end to retention is provided for therein, and, ideally at least, a form of consciousness is possible in which everything is retentionally retained.

With regard to the foregoing, cf. Appendix I, pp. 129ff.

9. Cf. also the distinction between internal and external perception, § 44, pp. 122ff.

10. For a discussion of further differences between retention and reproduction, cf. § 19, pp. 68ff.

11. Concerning acts as constituted unities in primordial consciousness, cf. § 37, pp. 100ff.

12. Cf. Appendix II: Presentification and Phantasy—Impression and Imagination, pp. 133ff.

13. Cf. pp. 57ff.

14. One can also take this the other way around, since reproduction makes intuitive the succession of which we are conscious merely in retention.

15. Cf. Appendix III: The Correlational Intentions of Memory and Perception—The Modes of Time-Consciousness, pp. 137ff.

16. Cf. Appendix XI, pp. 170ff.

17. Concerning impressions and phantasms, cf. Appendix II, pp. 133ff.

18. Cf. Appendix IV: Recollection and the Constitution of Temporal Objects and Objective Time [Zeitobjekten und objektiver Zeit], pp. 143ff.

19. Cf. pp. 63ff.

20. On the construction of simultaneity, cf. § 38, pp. 102ff., and Appendix VII, pp. 155ff.

21. Cf. Appendix V: The Simultaneity of Perception and the Perceived, pp. 146ff.