Mental Space and Time

Abstract

By mental or psychological time I mean the time in which the mind experiences itself as living, the time which ‘ it enjoys; by mental space I mean, assuming it to exist, the space in which the mind experiences itself as living or which it enjoys. They are contrasted provisionally with the space and time of the objects of mind which the mind contemplates. I hope to show on the strength of experience that mental space and time possess the same characters and are related in the same intimacy of relation as physical Space and Time; that the time of mental events is spatial and their space temporal precisely as with physical Space and Time, and further that mental time, the time in which the mind lives its life or minds its mind, is a piece of the Time in which physical events occur; and similarly of mental space. In many respects it would have made the task of analysing physical Space and Time in the preceding chapters easier if, following the method of the angels and assuming mind to be an existence alongside of physical existence, I had examined first the simplest elements in mind rather than in physical objects, and with the results of the analysis of the familiar thing mind, had passed to the analysis of the less familiar external world.