But how is the psalm in question "extended along" the memory or the expectation? Are the parts of it successive, or do they thus exist simultaneously? If everything in the memory image exists at once, if all belongs to the punctual present, to the mere point that divides past from future, how can a man get from it a consciousness of time, of a something whose parts cannot exist together but must follow each other? Augustine appears to overlook the fact that on his own hypothesis, the present, the only existent, the only thing a man can be conscious of, is an indivisible instant. In such there can be no change; the man who is shut up to such cannot be aware that the past is growing and the future diminishing. Any such change as this implies at least two instants, an earlier and a later. He who has never experienced a change of any sort, who has never been conscious of the relation of earlier and later, of succession, cannot think of the varied content of memory as of _that which has been present_. It cannot mean to him what memory certainly means to us; he cannot be conscious of a past, a present, and a future. To extract the notion of time, of past, present, and future, from an experience which contains no element of succession, from an indivisible instant, is as hopeless a task as to extract a line from a mathematical point. It appears, then, that, if we are to be conscious of time at all, if we are to have the least conception of it, we must have some direct experience of change. We cannot really be shut up to that punctual present, that mere point or limit between past and future, that the present has been described as being. But does this not imply that we can be directly conscious of what is not present, that we can _now_ perceive what does _not now_ exist? How is this possible? It is not easy for one whose reading has been somewhat limited in any given field to see the full significance of the problems which present themselves in that field. Those who read much in the history of modern philosophy will see that this ancient difficulty touching our consciousness of time has given rise to some exceedingly curious speculations, and some strange conclusions touching the nature of the mind. Thus, it has been argued that, since the experience of each moment is something quite distinct from the experience of the next, a something that passes away to give place to its successor, we cannot explain the consciousness of time, of a whole in which successive moments are recognized as having their appropriate place, unless we assume a something that knows each moment and knits it, so to speak, to its successor. This something is the self or consciousness, which is independent of time, and does not exist in time, as do the various experiences that fill the successive moments. It is assumed to be _timelessly_ present _at all times_, and thus to connect the nonexistent past with the existent present.