The Law of Mind (1892)
“If the sensation that precedes the present by half a second were still immediately before me, then on the same principle, the sensation preceding that would be immediately present, and so on ad infinitum.”
Now, since there is a time [period], say a year, at the end of which an idea is no longer ipso facto present, it follows that this is true of any finite interval, however short.
The Law of Mind (1892)
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Charles Sanders Peirce 121
American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist 1839–1914Related quotes
Et comme tout présent état d'une substance simple est naturellement une suite de son état précédent, tellement, que le présent y est gros de l'avenir.
La monadologie (22).
The Monadology (1714)
“You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving.”
Source: Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1848/feb/22/expenditure-of-the-country in the House of Commons (22 February 1848).
“There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.”
The Allowable Rhyme (1915)
Non-Fiction
Context: The poetical tendency of the present and of the preceding century has been divided in a manner singularly curious. One loud and conspicuous faction of bards, giving way to the corrupt influences of a decaying general culture, seems to have abandoned all the properties of versification and reason in its mad scramble after sensational novelty; whilst the other and quieter school constituting a more logical evolution from the poesy of the Georgian period, demands an accuracy of rhyme and metre unknown even to the polished artists of the age of Pope.