simultaneous; it would be absurd to speak of a past that existed
simultaneously with the present, just as it would be absurd to speak of a
present existing simultaneously with the past. But we should not deny to
past, present, and future, respectively, their appropriate existence; nor
is it by any means self-evident that there cannot be a consciousness of
past, present, and future as such.

We fall in with the assumption, it seems, because we know very well that
we are not directly conscious of a remote past and a remote future. We
represent these to ourselves by means of some proxy--we have present
memories of times long past and present anticipations of what will be in
the time to come. Moreover, we use the word "present" very loosely; we
say the present year, the present day, the present hour, the present
minute, or the present second. When we use the word thus loosely, there
seems no reason for believing that there should be such a thing as a
direct consciousness that extends beyond the present. It appears
reasonable to say: No one can be conscious save of the present.

It should be remembered, however, that the generous present of common
discourse is by no means identical with the ideal point between past and
future dealt with in the argument under discussion. We all say: I now
see that the cloud is moving; I now see that the snow is falling. But
there can be no moving, no falling, no change, in the timeless "now" with
which we have been concerned. Is there any evidence whatever that we are
shut up, for all our immediate knowledge, to such a "now"? There is none
whatever.

The fact is that this timeless "now" is a product of reflective thought
and not a something of which we are directly conscious. It is an ideal
point in the real time of which this chapter has treated, the time that
is in a certain sense infinitely divisible. It is first cousin to the
ideal mathematical point, the mere limit between two lines, a something
not perceptible to any sense. We have a tendency to carry over to it
what we recognize to be true of the very different present of common
discourse, a present which we distinguish from past and future in a
somewhat loose way, but a present in which there certainly is the
consciousness of change, of duration. And when we do this, we dig for
ourselves a pit into which we proceed to fall.

We may, then, conclude that we are directly conscious of more than the
present, in the sense i