This view is correct in the main, and is seen, indeed, to follow from
the great psychological principle that what we attend to exists for us
more, has more reality, and so naturally seems greater than what we do
not attend to. At the same time, this principle must be supplemented by
another consideration. Suppose that I am very desirous that time should
not pass quickly. If, for example, I am enjoying myself or indulging in
idleness, and know that I have to be off to keep a not very agreeable
engagement in a quarter of an hour, time will seem to pass too rapidly;
and this not because my thoughts are diverted from the fact of its
transition, for, on the contrary, they are reverting to it more than
they usually do, but because my wish to lengthen the interval leads me
to represent the unwelcome moment as further off than it actually is, in
other words, to construct an ideal representation of the period in
contrast with which the real duration looks miserably short.
Our estimate of duration, when it is over, depends less on this
circumstance of having attended to its transition than on other
considerations. Wundt, indeed, seems to think that the feeling
accompanying the actual flow of time has no effect on the surviving
subjective appreciation; but this must surely be an error, since our
mental image of any period is determined by the character of its
contents. Wundt says that when once a tedious waiting is over, it looks
short because we instantly forget the feeling of tedium. My
self-observation, as well as the interrogation of others, has satisfied
me, on the contrary, that this feeling distinctly colours the
retrospective appreciation. Thus, when waiting at a railway station for
a belated train, I am distinctly aware that each quarter of an hour
looks long, not only as it passes, but when it is over. In fact, I am
disposed to express my feeling as one of disappointment that only so
short an interval has passed since I last looked at my watch.
Nevertheless, I am ready to allow that, though a feeling of tedium, or
the contrary feeling of irritation at the rapidity of time, will linger
for an appreciable interval and colour the retrospective estimate of
time, this backward view is chiefly determined by other considerations.
As Wundt remarks, we have no sense of time's slowness during sleep, yet
on waking we imagine that we have been dreaming for an immensely long
period. This retrospective appreciation is determined by the number and
the degree or intensity of the experiences, and, what comes very much to
the same thing, by the amount of unlikeness, freshness, and
discontinuity characterizing these experiences.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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