ADDENDA AND SUPPLEMENTS TO THE ANALYSIS OF TIME-CONSCIOUSNESS FROM THE YEARS 1905–1910
APPENDIX I
PRIMAL IMPRESSION AND ITS CONTINUUM OF MODIFICATIONS1
Every primal impression is characterized as such and every modification as such. Further, every modification is a continuous modification. This, indeed, distinguishes this kind of modification from the phantasmal and the figurative. Each of these temporal modifications is a dependent limit in a continuum. And this continuum has the character of a one-sided, limited, orthogonal [orthoiden] multiplicity. This multiplicity has its beginning in the primal impression and continues as a modification in a given direction. Pairs of points having like intervals in this continuum constitute temporal phases of Objects, these phases being Objectively the same distance apart.
When we speak of a “modification” we have in mind, above all, the alteration according to which the primal impression continuously “dies away.” Nonetheless, each modification is obviously to be considered in the same sense as a modification of any given preceding modification. If we abstract any phase of the continuum, we can say that it dies away; and the same is true of any additional phase. This, indeed, is part of the essence of every such (unilaterally directed) continuum. It behaves exactly as in the continuity of intensities spreading out from O. The augmentation is here the modification which every intensity undergoes. Every intensity in itself is what it is and every new intensity is precisely a new one. But in relation to any intensity already given, every phase later in the series can be considered as the result of an operation. If B is the augmentation of A, then C is the augmentation of an augmentation with reference to A. Thanks to the continuity, not every point is simply an augmentation in relation to a preceding one, but an augmentation of an augmentation, and so on ad infinitum and infinitesimally—an infinity of modifications, one into the other. Only here there is no beginning point which itself can be considered as an intensity. The beginning is here a null-point. It is part of the essence of every linear continuum that, proceeding from an arbitrary point, we are able to consider that every other point is continually generated from the first, and every continuous generation is a generation through continuous iteration. We can divide every interval ad infinitum and with every division we can envision the later points of division produced mediately through the earlier, and thus any given point you choose is finally produced by one of infinitely many augmentations (of which each is the same infinitely small augmentation). It is also thus with regard to temporal modifications—or, rather, whereas with other continua the talk of generation was only figurative, what we have here is a real description. The temporally constitutive continuum is a flux of continuous generation of modifications of modifications. Starting from the actual now, i.e., from the actual primal impression, the modifications in the sense of iterations proceed, but continually forward. They are not only modifications with reference to primal impressions but also, as regards the series, modifications of one another in the order in which they proceed. This is the characteristic of continuous generation. Modifications continuously beget ever new modifications. The primal impression is the absolute beginning of this generation—the primal source, that from which all others are continuously generated. In itself, however, it is not generated; it does not come into existence as that which is generated but through spontaneous generation. It does not grow up (it has no seed): it is primal creation. Does this mean that a fresh now is continuously added on to the now which is modified into a not-now? Or does the now generate, spring up all of a sudden, a source? These are the images. One can only say that consciousness is nothing without an impression. Where something endures, there a goes over into xa′, xa′ into yx′a″, and so on. The generation of consciousness, however, goes only from a to a′, from xa′ to x′a″. On the other hand, the a, x, y is nothing generated by consciousness; it is the primally generated, the “new,” that which comes into existence foreign to consciousness, that which is received as opposed to that which is generated through the spontaneity proper to consciousness. The unique quality of the spontaneity of consciousness, however, is that it merely brings about the growth, the development of the primally generated. It creates nothing “new.” Of course, what empirically we call becoming or generation refers to Objectivity, and this is something else again. Here it is a matter of the spontaneity of consciousness, or more circumspectly, the primal spontaneity of consciousness.
Now, the moment of origin—according as it is a matter of the primal source of the now of the constituted content or of the spontaneous generations of consciousness in which the identity of this now continues into the past—is either primal impression or primal remembrance, primal phantasy, etc. If we follow the order of succession of the strata, then every moment of origin of a stratum is the primal source of spontaneous generations which go through the additional strata in their continuous transformations and which represent this moment of origin therein (the moment, that is, which belongs simply and solely to the stratum which is first apprehended). Further, every moment of origin is a phase of a continuous series of such moments which go over into one another through a succession of strata. In other words, every moment of origin helps to constitute a concrete duration, and it belongs to the constitution of a concrete duration that an actual now corresponds to every point of this duration; on its side, this now requires for its constitution a proper moment of origin. These moments in the succession are continuously one, “go continuously over into one another.” The transition is “qualitatively” established and, at the same time, is also temporal. The quasi-temporal character is a constant one.
1. To § 12, p. 52.